What's our best chance of pulling off a Celtics renovation? Dame is our pierce. Who is KG and Ray Allen? Embiid and Brown? If we were to renounce all our cap holds and we win a top 3 pick, can we move enough assets to acquire both of those players? And then who do we go get to fill out the roster? Simons/Nurk/Little/pick for Embiid. Sharpe/NYK pick/future first for Brown? Can we absorb his contract if we renounce all cap holds? Dame/Brown/Embiid is the kind of core that you need to win a ring, but we'd have to blow up the team to get it and I'm not sure if we'd have enough to get Brown if we went after Embiid. And then how do you get enough talent on your bench to back them up?
Yup. Dame is top 10, and on some nights he is a top 5 talent, but he's not a guy that can just completely dominate a series on both ends like a LeBron or a Giannis. He needs a team around him like Curry has with the Warriors.
I don't think you think that nor am I making stuff up. I don't want to trade Dame at a major discount for the sake of getting rid of him. That's my stance. I don't know or have your stance memorized, but I take you at your word that you don't want to dump him either. I don't know what the minimum you're willing to take in return for trading him either.
I think what any GM wants; a boat of firsts—the more the better, 1 young player, and short term salary filler. If you trade Dame you'd also have to slickly maneuver a S&T with Jerami Grant too, for someone younger. No idea who that would be. I'm not saying we 'have' to trade Dame, but I wouldn't make a 'gun to my head lotto overpay for a meh piece' trade either. GMs always look silly doing that.
There’s a high likelihood that Grant will just go to a non contender for the most money offered so he can get his numbers again. In that case, a S&T is moot.
you've gone thru a lot of work to list 2 options for Portland...it seems and what's clear, or at least seems to be clear, from your list is that the Blazers need a player as good as Dame, and maybe a player better. But there is not player anywhere close to as hood as Dame on the roster. Ant-Grant-Nurkic are at a level about 3 tiers below Dame. So they aren't part of the equation or formula so the issue is that Portland needs to land a player as good as, or better than Dame, and who is almost certainly a wing. But I have yet to see one of you guys who are incessantly saying to trade Dame explain how trading away a top 10 player directly leads to landing two top-10 players; or a top-5 player and a top-20 player. There's no formula for that in trading Dame that is demonstrably better than the one in keeping Dame. In fact, any honest application of logic would say that if a championship depends on having an A+B, it's better to have the B and be looking for the A, than to have a couple of D's and a couple of F's, and a bunch of K's and praying to land both that A+B. Keeping Dame at least keeps Portland around 45-50% there while trading him leaves the Blazer 0% there in other words, what is the actual benefit of trading Dame if a championship in the next 3-4 years is the goal? What is the championship payoff? what team actually traded away their only elite player leaving them with no all-stars, and won a championship in the next 5 years?
I don't think anyone that supports trading Dame thinks they can win a championship in the next 3-4 years from either path. That is just something you made up so you could knock down.
My goal is to win a championship in my lifetime. 3-4 years is not realistic unless someone gifts us a few top 5 players, or we win the lottery and Wemby ends up being a top 5 caliber player. Dame presents a few challenges by simply being on the roster: His contract - dude is making an insane amount of money and that makes it difficult to add talent around him. His talents are enough to keep us in the hunt. We basically had to shut everyone down to get into the bottom 5. He's not going to want to do that again. Our best bet to land top 5 players is by getting into the lottery. That's the reality of being in Portland. Is Shae a top 5 caliber guy? Hard to say at this point. He has a ton of talent but I'd say he's maybe a top 10 or top 15 caliber guy if he puts it all together. So if we really want a ring we need a top 5 guy. Those are basically impossible to get unless you draft them or unless you're LA. So the draft is our best bet. That's not going to make Dame happy. So I'm sorry but destroying our future so we can go out and get some middling talents like Grant is simply not worth keeping Dame happy. I love the guy. He's my favorite player of all time.... but we have been on this treadmill for seven years. It's time to get off.
the Blazers can give him a 5th year and more money than anyone else. There’s a path—not a great one, but a path.
Did you read my post? I don't think we can get a haul. We can get assets, though. And that's better than being a mediocre team again where we don't even let our best players finish the season.
no, it's not something I made up; it's something I reasoned and LOL at what you just said....which is essentially that there's no way to win a championship in the next 4 years if Dame is traded. That almost certainly means not in the next 4-5 years, probably not the next 5-6 years, maybe not 7 years? 9 years? Lebron didn't win a championship till his 9th season, and he did it in Miami, not Cleveland. Giannis didn't till his 8th season. Kawhi was in his 8th season when he led Toronto to the rings. Dirk didn't win a title till his 13th season. It took Durant till his 10th season to win a championship and he didn't do it on the team that drafted him trading Dame is not anymore of a path to a championship than not trading him
I agree that there is no way for this team to get another player (or two) at Dame's level, which is what we need to compete for a title with Dame. I don't think that winning a title in the next five years is reasonable no matter WHAT we do, but if we trade Dame soon, I think the next five years will be more interesting as fans. We will have hope for a bright future. We will look forward to draft night and to young players developing. Philadelphia made bad trades, missed on a bunch of picks, and STILL have had one of the best teams in the NBA (for six years in a row now) after four bad, BAD years. Should Philly have kept Holiday and Turner and Hawes and Young in order to keep building on those ~34-win seasons? I'll take hope for the future and in our young guys any day compared to... last year (ended on a 2-22 or so streak) and this year (ended on a 3-18 or so streak, including losing by 56 points at home to end the year). We have an upside of mediocrity but are smart enough to be dreadful to end years. We only have one player of consequence on a rookie deal. We have lots of players that can't stay healthy. We have a dramatic lack of size across the roster. There's no guarantee of a title after we trade Dame, but there's a guarantee of hope for a title that just doesn't exist right now.
I'm 71...I'm pretty sure you're a lot younger. Chances are my lifetime will be shorter than your lifetime. Way of the world. You should be more patient than me...your window is open a lot wider ok...I'll say it..I don't believe that...at all. Dame is making 34% of the cap. 10 NBA players make the same or more. Dame makes 42.4M. 20 NBA players make more than 37M. And Embiid & Jokic, who both make 33M will make more than Dame next season. 43 players make over 30M, and 6 more players will join that club next season it IS NOT Dame's salary over the last 4 years or the next 4 years that is preventing roster upgrades; it's management. If Dame was making 10M less he'd be paid less than Middleton, Tobias Harris, Klay, Gobert, Trae Young, Siakam, LaVine, Ben Simmons, Myles Turner, KAT, Porzingis, Holiday, Wiggins, AND CJ. Are you really going to try and justify paying him less than any of those guys? if Dame was paid 10M less the Blazers would have still been 13M OVER the salary cap. Which doesn't fucking matter anyway because when was the last time the Blazers signed an all-star free agent? I don't know if you've advocated for Portland to trade Dame even if he doesn't want to be traded. I think that's the Rubicon for most of us. I've said many times before that if Dame does ask out, Portland should launch a full scale rebuild. Trade Ant, Nurkic, Grant, and any other player of that level for all the draft capital they can land. Get deliberately bad and try to load up on draft picks. Trading Dame probably won't even net a single lottery pick, let alone a top-5 pick. Being a trash team for a few years is the only way to do that. So, in a way we agree.
lol...c'mon man. There may be nothing more subjective than hope. I think a hell of a lot more hope will be killed by trading dame than keeping him
I can't tell if this was a joke post, of if the post had recently fell and hit its head and is now in concussion protocol. Because that is such an unrealistic and never going to happen trade scenario, that its almost difficult to read it and keep a straight face.
