To me the Blazers and Cronin already look stupid for not putting a quality rotation around Dame. I don't need him to win a series with the Bucks to tell me that. He won enough here with the dregs he had.
You have to give the Pacers some credit as well. They made adjustments in the second half. Smothered Dame and made someone else make some shots. What is interesting to me was that it wasn't the plan from the beginning? The knock on Doc is he doesn't make great adjustments throughout a series. He has the pieces to go with different looks with this team even without Giannis. Game two should be tougher than game one. Look for Middleton and Portis to get more looks and Dame to pick up that double at mid court from the start. X-factors are Beverly and Beasley.
It does still make me sad to think that it might have conceivably been possible to pick up Ayton without jettisoning Dame, and to conceive of what a Dame/Grant/Ayton lineup with complementary parts (Sharpe, Amen [instead of Scoot], other forward procured by trading Ant) might have looked like. I still think it would have ended in disappointment, but we'll never truly know.
I totally agree that there may have been some things they could have done? The Ayton trade might not have been pivotal on Allen? Could they have got that trade done? Not sure? Ended in disappointment is a tough one though? The season ends in disappointment for 29 teams. I'm a Niners fan. Pretty happy they are good enough to make the Super bowl and will again be in a position to try to get back there. In the NBA all you have to do is make the second round is my experience over the years. Look at the injuries and how things play out? Even the Nuggets can be beat if they are pushed into a long series a couple times.
That would basically have been my threshold as well--would a Dame/Grant/Ayton based roster have been good enough to win a first round series. Seeing the top of the west this year, I think not.
With that thinking though, take it a step further. How about Dame/Grant/Ayton and Hart? Been said on here the beginning of the end for Dame came before the trade of Hart? Possibly the year before when they moved away from CJ? Look at the impact Nance is having this year?
I dunno--I still think it was a pretty fair assumption that Hart was gone regardless. I mean, a deal for Ayton at the '23 deadline might have made that a different story, but I don't really think that was on the table.
ok....if you're just going to confine the coulda/shoulda on Dame to last off season, then go full bore. Say a promise of an 18-20M/year contract to Hart could have kept him in Portland. Then say, for giggles, that Portland wasn't dumb enough to add Ayton's salary, but instead worked out a trade with Indiana that brought Myles Turner to Portland + another player. The Pacers were the team that really wanted Ayton. Also reserve the option that mercifully, finally, the Blazers shit-canned the notion of an undersized no-defense SG and waved bye-bye to 13 years of the CJ/Ant era. And finally, with the Blazers committed to keeping Dame, they'd either move the 3rd pick (+ Ant?) for another all-star level player that was taller than 6'4. Or even draft Amen Thompson. I'm seeing a team that could pretty easily cruise into the 2nd round but confining it to just last season ignores all the opportunities Portland had to put a contender around Dame. It all tracks back to Olshey's idiocy, obviously, and if I was to point to the critical component of that idiocy it was Olshey's blind ego-drive infatuation with CJ. Olshey never once tried to build a team around Dame. It was always build a team around CJ & Dame. That's why he held CJ untouchable in trade talks for PG13 in 2017; and repeated CJ's untouchable stature in trade talks for Jimmy Butler in 2018. What Olshey did was assume he had his big-2 in place so he spent years rearranging the deck chairs around them; cycling thru low-level role players like Turner, Crabbe, Aminu, Harkless, Hood, Curry, RoCo, Nance. That when his goal should have first been finding a 2nd elite player, like a PG13, or Butler to pair with Dame
Cronin never would have been able to. As Wiz astutely pointed out, this falls on Olshey. He could have made big plays with LMA and CJ but sat on his hands. Cronin inherited the job with two hands tied behind his back.
And he tried. He got Hart. He got Grant. He got GPII. He tried to acquire rotation guys. So either Chauncey is straight up garbage, which is very possible, or the pieces that we could get just weren't enough.
The fact remains, in the West, the Blazers would not be facing a team as bad as Indiana in the first round.
I wondered if Dame scorched earth stance/Miami only/Cronin feud was because he had someone else like Brown willing to come here but Cronin fell in love with keeping #3 plus Jody didn't want to pay another $200+mil and pay Dame/Grant plus tax. Brown for #3 and Ant. Then as you say add #23 or whatever to get Ayton. Dame Sharpe Brown Grant Ayton Would've been a lot more fun season last year as well as next!
Incorrect, Hart wanted a team to value him and consider resigning him, the Blazers weren't. They were to busy budgeting 160 million to Grant while ducking the tax.
Which made sense. They weren't even a playoff team, so going into the tax for a 32% 3pt shooter didn't make a ton of sense.
