Dame flew out this morning…..had a farewell thing for friends and family. Cool to get a chance to say goodbye. Going to miss this dude ALOT!
I hope he comes to enjoy his situation. If he looks mad or sad or whatever just remember he’s not a kid anymore. He was never going to be wide eyed about this. He’s seen too much.
Especially after everything we've heard over the summer about Miami being his only choice and only opening his options when Miami and Cronin couldn't get something worked out.
I don’t think he did open up his list. Sean Highkin said on the Heat podcast that he didn’t think that report was true and that it was just Goodwin saving face. Woj reported that Cronin was talking to Milwaukee for a while but he had to keep it a secret. Haynes said in his article and on his pod that Dame was shocked and had to process Milwaukee. I don’t think he was mentally prepared for it at all.
There are some really cool spots in Milwaukee. I lived in Chicago for four years and spent some time up in MIL. Good town, good people, fun place.
Well in comparison to the Heat the grass is definitely greener with the Bucks... just look at the uni.
That's the difference between a man at 25 who never has been given the shot at being the man despite being the number one pick and a man at 33 who when he came into the league as the sixth pick knew he was the man and just needed everyone else to catch up. Whatever this is to Dame, it's not new and it's not over the top exciting. For Ayton this is the chance to be the man and start a new chapter at a very young age. Of course one seems over the top excited and the other one seems to have tempered expectations. Dame has overachieved any expectations that anyone had for him but himself and Ayton has underachieved every expectation that anyone had for him, including himself. Why wouldn't the response to a new team be extremely different?
Yeah, Milwaukee's just like that in the same way that Portland is just like Eugene and Detroit is just like Ann Arbor
nah....its a nice city. Just have to stay there long enough to explore. Where is it you stay there? Near Mitchell has some ? areas.
maybe I'm just making excuses for Dame, but I'm thinking that Dame seriously miscalculated what the strategy of his agent really meant. That the scorched earth campaign was effectively burning his bridge back to Portland. I think Dame assumed he had two options: Miami first and Portland if Miami failed. That's why he was so shocked when Cronin told him it was too late to rescind (and why I suspect Cronin was secretly hoping Dame would ask out, and subtly engineering that outcome) there is obvious bad blood between Dame and Cronin. I think in one way, both have plenty of blame. But in another fundamental way, neither has much blame. it's pretty hard to just dip a toe into divorce. It gathers it's own momentum and both sides are driven along for a bumpy ride if Dame is smart though, he'll fire his agent ASAP
His agent probably wanted to out of Portland all along and convinced Dame he could get him to South Beach, knowing all along it would burn any bridge back.
yeah, good summary I also would say it seems pretty clear that Ayton didn't like Phoenix ownership, management, coaches, several teammates, and little about his situation. Dame appeared to only dislike the Blazer GM and the roster situation. He loved most everything else in Portland.
Well... the other thing is, according to Haynes, Dame asked to rescind the trade at the start of September, but I suspect that Joe had put too much work into lining things up. If you believe the timeline in the Woj article, we had already engaged with Milwaukee. We had already engaged with Phoenix. Things were coming together.
This feels like an old girlfriend you could no longer be with--but who you really still love--finding the love of her life with a really good guy for a happily-ever-after ending. Happy for her, but f*** it hurts.
I just read that Dame and wife have separated and could be part of the reason why Dame requested out of Portland:
