This dude wasted Dame's prime. This is on him. I get that people are pissed at Joe, but I have been driving you all nuts for years because I have been screaming about Neil wasting Dame's prime. Now here we are. Fuck Neil Olshey. Fuck this dude. I'm sure he's never planning on coming back, but we should exile this prick from the state of Oregon. Total piece of shit. His ego and his hubris ruined any chance of ever winning with Dame. Joe Cronin was handed a roster filled with mediocre talent and bloated contracts. He was given a vault with traded picks that are still hindering us to this day. Here is a list of Neil's greatest hits: Let LMA walk for nothing. Let Wes Matthews walk for nothing. Traded Batum for a pile of garbage. Let Rolo walk for nothing. Traded the 15th pick and 20th pick for Zach Collins. Let Zach Collings walk away for nothing. Maxed CJ Signed Crabbe to a huge deal. Signed Leonard to a huge deal. Signed Evan Turner to a huge deal. Signed Festus Ezeli to a big deal. Traded for and stretched Anderson Verejao Traded Crabbe for Andrew Nicholson and then stretched Nicholson. Traded GTJ for Norm. Signed DJJ Signed Mario Hezonja. Signed Anthony Tolliver. Signed Cody Zeller. Signed Tony Snell. This. Dude. Sucked. Ass. We as a city should file a class action lawsuit against this moron for ruining our team and essentially allowing our roster to become a fucking expansion team the summer that LMA left. Look at this fucking roster that Dame loaded up on his back and carried into the second round of the playoffs. Fuck you Neil.
This is one of your best post. Man! Look at all that carnage "Hair Do" did. I'm shocked he's still around. But when you're rich, you make life awesome anywhere.
Well, don't let the guys that hate Joe see this, they are so upset that in 18 months he did nothing other than expunge most of the garbage he got from Neil and set the Blazers for the future with 2 high-upside draft picks in Sharpe and Scoot.
He literally got lucky walking into a team that already had their mind made up in Dame (with Buchanan's group landing there). Coasted on that for years. Cj was a goodish pick in that abysmal draft, just a bad fit. How different things would be if he would have traded for Jimmy Butler when he was getting tossed around for less than his worth.
This is something we can agree on, Nate. What made him even more horrible was he came to Portland with all this hype, and he handled himself in public like that hype made him beyond reproach. He never embraced Portland. He was an LA/NY type of guy. Never understood the charm or how to market the team. Because he didn't he was constantly overpaying for what he brought in, because he never could see what players would like about playing here, identify those guys, and put together a good roster from them. The one minor disagreement I have with your post is this. He doesn't deserve being dragged for wasting Dame's prime. Well, some, but that's not the main reason. He deserves to be dragged because he wasted years of opportunities the Blazers had with Dame as the cornerstone of the team. And the Blazers are still dealing with the repercussions of his shortcomings, whereas Dame won't feel it as much after he's dealt.
I think part of the problem, is that Dame was good enough to keep the team from ever truly sucking, so we didn't get many good draft picks. The one we did get, we wiffed on (Zach Collins). Neil should have made some deals (CJ), to acquire some young talent that we could develop. Like how the Pacers traded George for Sabonis, who wasn't a star at the time but turned into one.
The fucker would not trade CJ. He just wouldn't do it. Supposedly we could have had PG if we included CJ. I think we could have had Butler if we included CJ. Neil was absolutely completely convinced that CJ had to be a part of a championship core. It was absurd.
I still can't believe we drafted Luis Montero. Edit - Guess we didn't draft him, but he was signed. All I remember was thinking this guy is a scrub.
Shit. Even taking John Collins at 15, Jarrett Allen or OG Anunoby at 20, or Kyle Kuzma at 26 that draft could have changed our path. That draft was an abysmal failure.
He somehow skated through all this. And when you go back and look at the steaming mountain of shit that he left here, you can't believe he was able to last as long as he was. Jody had to cook up a bullshit morals clause reason to fire him.
I couldn't agree more with this post. His insistence that we could play with an undersized lineup baffled me.
He was a good PR man. I believed some of that shit until I saw the product on the court. (I never really follow college basketball, so my assessment of prospects, especially at the lower picks is questionable).
Guess we didn't draft him, but I remember some crazy talk during summer league. No clue how that guy made the team.
