Here's my take on things after sitting with it.
We all want this team to get magically better by next season so we can win it all with Dame. Not going to happen. Shaedon, Scoot, Yang, it's gonna take years. We are all setting ourselves up for a big disappointment. It's good to dream, but reality is just smack you that much harder in the end.
Sone of the picks we have might begin to entice a team to trade us a star level player, but nobody wants our guys outside of Camara, Deni, and maybe Shaedon. No one wants to touch Grant with a 10 foot pole and be the center of any trade package the Blazers would be offering. So, I don't see us trading for another star player. We could get lucky like with Deni. But, usually for the Blazers if lightning strikes twice, it's not in a good way.
No one worth a shit is coming here in free agency.
The only thing left is to keep drafting and try for home grown stars. Shaedon may become a star still. He has the ability, he just lacks the self confidence. That could still come with maturity.
I do think it's time to let Murray and Rayan go. Especially Murray. We drafted him because we thought he might be better or as good as his brother. He isn't. We can't keep players around that aren't going to get better. We need the roster spots to keep bringing in new guys, to keep trying to find stars.
OKC didn't go from bottom dweller to title contenders over night. Granted, they did miss the playoffs and the next year go to the semis, but lets not act like they were 36 wins and then title contenders the next year.
They're in year 6 of their rebuild, and while it did result in a NBA championship, that was in year 5.
They also had the 21-22 season where they had 26 players play on their team.
It wasn't until SGA, who was 25 and in his 6th season, that they had a winning record.
Shaedon is still 24, Deni is 25, and Scoot (who might or might not be helpful) is 21.
Now in no way am I saying that Shaedon or Deni are the same as SGA (I'd suggest that Deni is close to him, but not on the same level yet), but that the whole "they're years away" thing is strange. No shit. Even if everyone was healthy (this year), they'd still be at least a year away from being a top 6 team. They're probably 3 years away from (potentially) being a top 3 team.
That's kind of how it goes.
In 3 years, Shaedon will *still* be younger than SGA is today. Hell, Deni (assuming they are able to re-sign him, etc) will be the same age SGA is now.
I'm excited about the prospects of 3 seasons of growth for Shaedon, Deni, Tou, Clinker and potentially Yang and Scoot.
And throw into that probably a year or 2 of decent Damian play, that's kind of what we should be expecting and not having these unrealistic expectations for the team now. (Not saying you're doing that Chris, just fans in general seem to lack perspective at times).
