Do you mean from the Blazers toward Dame, the fans to Dame, or Dame to Blazers fans? I'm not understanding. My post was comparing the venom Wiz said some have toward Dame is reciprocal to Dame's posture to the Blazers, which came first, He got traded to a better team than he requested. You don't think an organization letting him in on most decisions for more than half his time here, acquiring players he wanted and even putting his non-qualified cousin on the roster for two years deserved better than "we're going to try to screw over the Blazers for not trading Dame to Miami for peanuts"?
That's a lot of conjecture and unconditional belief in Team Dame, which, having seen how they carried themselves, seems hard to place unless one had their mind already made up.
wut? "unconditional belief in Team Dame"...? I think "team Dame" was Dame, his agent, and Pat Riley. I think two of those are snakes and Dame isn't one of them I thought I explained how I perceived that but maybe I wasn't clear...being that Dame's posture to the Blazers, and Blazer fans, was dramatically different than his posture toward Joe Cronin. I think there was bad blood between Dame and Cronin; and I don't think the bad blood was all conjured up by Dame alone
I think it's a bit naive or a sign of partiality to think Dame's agent and his surrogates in the press presented what they did without Dame's OK, and guys like Fentress and Haynes are Dame guys, not Riley guys. As to the second part, I'm not sure why you're responding to a question directed to kjironman, but why wouldn't Dame's posture be different to Cronin than to the fans? The fans can't trade him. The bad blood could simply have been from not trading him to the team he wanted. You not thinking it was all conjured up by Dame doesn't mean it wasn't all conjured up by Dame. Clearly, none of us know the answer to that, but you're making a supposition without the benefit of information. It's all conjecture.
I guess i just really never saw this part? Maybe i wasn't really paying attention? I do agree both side could have handled it better. The whole I want to go to Miami seemed to make the entire situation tough. On the other hand that probably could have been said behind closed doors just like the trade to Milwaukee was handled fairly discreetly.
I guess that could be a matter of interpretation, but how many other NBA examples since the arrival of social media do we have of so many stories coming from a player's camp of not only a trade request but a demand to be dealt to one other team? I'm just not really sure how anyone cannot see that part. We had Dame's agent making statements. We had the people in the media closest to Dame making statements. They all were aligned. Dame, at any point, could have taken to Twitter and set it straight but never did. That seemed really telling. He couldn't help but be aware of what was going on. It goes, I think, beyond the realms of belief to think his surrogates were making inflammatory statements on his behalf either trashing the team ("he gave them his last 10 years and they owe it to him") or threatening the team ("if the Blazers don't trade him to the Heat he won't play for whoever he's traded to" or allusions that other information detrimental to the organization would be revealed) without Dame's direction or at least approval, especially as long as it went on. Obviously, we don't know what the Heat were offering, although most of the speculation and reports had Herro going to a third team for a first-round pick, a couple of picks (1R down the road and 2R) and pick swaps, one young talent (probably Jovic) and a combination of dumps to match salary (Duncan Robinson, Lowry). Caleb Martin was speculated early on but that seemed to get quashed. We had many indications that the Heat didn't feel the need to spend any more in compensation because the Blazers owed it to Dame/Dame had the Blazers over a barrel, and that narrative was leaned into heavily by Goodwin, Fentress and Haynes. Then we have that neither Cronin nor anyone in the Blazers fired any public shots at Dame in response. Everything was complimentary of Dame and what he did in Portland but also that the Blazers were committed to getting fair compensation but would try to send him to a contender -- which they did. Looking at that last part, I guess I just can't see any way someone can say "both sides." Only one side made this messy. Fans can speculate on what Cronin did, but we don't have to speculate about what Dame's camp did, because they did it for everyone to see for weeks. I loved Dame as a player and the face of the organization. That said, I can look at all the facts here as we know them and admit what his people did was dirty pool and his silence through it all didn't speak well for him. It just looks to me like some fans love for Dame the Blazer blind them to the behavior of Dame the Trade Prospect. They can't bring themselves to call it like it is for the latter because they're so invested in the former. If that part's incorrect, I'm open to hearing you or Wiz enlighten me how you reconcile how else you can feel the way you do beyond just an unconditional trust in Dame that requires an unreasonable distrust of Cronin.
Let me make one addendum to what I just posted -- "only one side made this messy, PUBLICLY." Anything Cronin or the Blazers did to make it messy, aside from the very reasonable reluctance to trade Dame to the Heat for useless parts, is completely speculative. We have a few people that claim to know things but they've never presented details of exactly what they know or where their information came from.
Have to agree with this. I was pretty impressed with exactly how little we knew about the actual trade before it happened. Joe certainly did a good job of keeping it close to the vest as they say.
yes, it's all conjecture, mine and yours and just about everyone else. But we do have 11 years of Dame as a Blazer to go on. Do you think that revealed nothing about him? by the way, I never said Dame didn't approve the 'Miami-or-bust' tactic. I didn't like the tactic. But I know I wasn't the only one who noticed the bad blood between Dame and Cronin. For me, those 11 years of Dame as a Blazer make me give him some benefit of the doubt in this situation and not lay 100% of the blame on Dame alone that's fair
Good post. One correction, Dame could never have directly set the record straight on Twitter. Players are banned from directly publicly demanding trades or discussing them. The NBA had direct discussions with the Blazers and Dames camp warning of this. But I agree to your larger point that Dame was primarily responsible for his camp making this messy, and the Blazers were not at fault.
Ok I think I understand why you feel that way, though I don't feel the same. I think of Dame messy trade request as greatly dimishing his Blazer legacy, he could've asked out in a professional respective way with the same result but gone down as possibly the best Blazer ever. Instead Clyde and Sheed are clearly above him, and he's probably tied with Roy and Walton. But once he's gone I turned the page. Wish we could've seen him and Giannis healthy as Id have enjoyed them winning or losing more than this incomplete final grade to their season.
No shit. Wallace isn't even in the Blazer Top 10. I mean c'mon, he was never even the best player on any of the Blazer teams he was part of. Overrated head case who still hasn't grown up.
Being restricted from talking about the trade or possibilities doesn't prohibit him from saying his feelings for the Blazers organization were being misrepresented, though. He can do things to make that clear without specifically talking about trade prospects.
Kind of where I am. People make mistakes, sometimes big mistakes, and are worthy of forgiveness. I'm not going to judge a potential Dame return at some point just by how things ended. That said, it's not something I'm actively hoping for. If it's in the best interest of the Blazers at the time, great. If not, fine. And it's definitely made me more indifferent to what happens to Lillard in the present. I'm not hoping he wins a ring. I won't be mad if he wins one, either. His outcomes just aren't that big of a deal for me.
But he set the record straight that he did in fact request a trade to the Heat in his interview with Marc Spears. The one where he said he didn't want to speak on the Blazers.
