Exclusive Ayton is agreeing to buyout

[Rastapopoulos]

didn't Joe re-sign Ant, re-sign Grant and trade for Ayton?

Not defending Cronin, but the best description is "get rid of Nurk"

 

[Rastapopoulos]

perused the laker reddit, they are salivating for ayton

They'll need that saliva later for when they're spitting in frustration.

Although we'll probably have to endure a lot of highlights of Doncic throwing lobs to Ayton in the early days, so be ready for that.

 

[andalusian]

But in the case of Ant, Grant and Ayton, didn't Joe re-sign Ant, re-sign Grant and trade for Ayton? So it seems reasonable to question why he did that for quite a bit of money only to let 2 of them go so far for even a more expensive contract, or to let them walk for nothing but some unknown cap space, yes?

It is fair in a vacuum but unrealistic, imho, without context.

You needed Ayton's salary to make the Dame trade which also allowed the team to get off the Nurkic salary, get Tou, contributed to the Deni trade and brought additional picks in the future. That's a very easy to explain transaction. It's a bummer they could not revive his career here - but that was an experiment worth taking because DA is very talented. There was hope that a change of scenery is all he needed, unfortunately, that was not so.

The Ant contract is also easy to explain, reasonable contract before the new CBA implications were understood, young player, worth giving him a try and it did expire before new contract to the new draftees were required. If the punitive new CBA did not happen, Ant would have been easy to move. They still managed to move him (and 2 SRP that they already replenished) for a much better player that should help with the team character and defensive identity. Sure, there are issues (Age, Contract), but the Blazers did manage to upgrade the talent for sure.

Grant is the big issue, his contract was a late ditch effort to keep Dame, it was also more palatable before the new CBA implications were obvious.

The good news is that despite all of these transitional moves - the Blazers still managed to find talent in all these position and are much better positioned to be good in the future.

 

[Sedatedfork]

They value their flexibility of their books, right now and my guess is that they shopped DA and only got offers for players with contracts past this year. Rather than taking back big money for more than a year, they waive him, save potentially on the buyout allowing them to use full MLE if they want to/find a good fit and open a roster spot.

We have a Camara extension coming, and new potential deal for Shaedon. We have Deni on an absolute steal of a contract that allows us some room to build out this roster as we grow.

Great post. At first I was really disappointed they did this, but when you think about it at least they have not compounded a mistake by taking on even more salaries to squeeze some value out of an asset that had little value to extract. If we have watchable basketball next year and some roster flexibility, this will have been a big reason why.

 

[Cugel]

Lebron knows Ayton is not the guy you want. DA thinks he is a first option

 

[B-Roy]

Ayton gave up his bird rights in this deal, which is kinda crazy. He must be getting at least a decent offer because no team is signing him for anything near 20M next year.

 

[Wizard Mentor]

If we wanted cap space next year we should have bought out Simons too if he wasn't a part of our future instead of trading for a 35 year old pg on the downswing.

In the game of basketball, some people guard the other teams biggest players while other players are better at putting the ball in the basket. We have different needs and expectations for different players....

 

[inconceivable]

Ayton gave up his bird rights in this deal, which is kinda crazy. He must be getting at least a decent offer because no team is signing him for anything near 20M next year.

he will ball out, it's contract year

 

[Wizard Mentor]

I hope it’s not Duncan Robinson even though he fills a need.

NAW plays good defense, has averaged over 38% from 3 in each of the last 3 years, and is a former Blazer. Midlevel would be a nice raise for him, too.

 

[wizenheimer]

Can someone please succinctly explain, how is our cap space affected by DA's buyout?

cap space will be increased by the exact amount his buy-out is below his 35.5M salary; plus 1/2 his new salary with another team - 1.2M

 

[Everything Beagle]

Zero value. Really?

No motor, no value.

 

[Wizard Mentor]

Just incredible how far this #1 pick has fallen. I remember when he was drafted most were calling him a can't miss player. This is the same thing that was being said about Williamson.
Think about Risacher and Cunningham as well.
Ayton, Fultz, Ben Simmons.

Crazy look at the last ten#1 picks.

For some players, signing a humongous, life-altering contract is their undoing. My working theory is that Ayton is one of those people.

 

[wizenheimer]

he will ball out, it's contract year

probably not. He may be signing an MLE-level deal for 3 years within the next 2 weeks

 

[SharpesTriumph]

Watching all these Lakers fans convince themselves that all Ayton needs is the right context to bust out is making me all moist-eyed with nostalgia.

I actually wouldnt be shocked if he plays well for the Lakers. Luka and LeBron are clearly the leaders of that team and Ayton will defer to them. In Portland Ayton thought he was one of the leaders of the team - he probably believed he was the best player.

Plus if Lakers only pay him a small contracts they have very little risk with plenty of options to go a different direction later. Quite different than when he came to PDX as the highest paid Blazer.

 

[Rastapopoulos]

NAW plays good defense, has average over 38% from 3 in each of the last 3 years, and is a former Blazer. Midlevel would be a nice raise for him, too.

We have too many competitors for him - he's one of the hot names.

 

[Wizard Mentor]

With your list of players we have with allstar potential, everyone in the league has allstar potential then.

Clingan can’t make a layup,

Yang hasn’t even played a damn summer league game yet

Scoot hasn’t shown anything near allstar potential

Sharpe has talent, but is super inconsistent

Camara is a great defender, but all star?

Deni, yes

We have 4 lotto picks in what I hope is our starting squad. 3 of those are pick 4 or higher. Go look at the graph of who becomes allstars, and you'll see its mostly just such players. Every player's game has holes in it. Don't know why you ignore nonBlazers when looking at that.

 

[SharpesTriumph]

It is fair in a vacuum but unrealistic, imho, without context.

You needed Ayton's salary to make the Dame trade which also allowed the team to get off the Nurkic salary, get Tou, contributed to the Deni trade and brought additional picks in the future. That's a very easy to explain transaction. It's a bummer they could not revive his career here - but that was an experiment worth taking because DA is very talented. There was hope that a change of scenery is all he needed, unfortunately, that was not so.

The Ant contract is also easy to explain, reasonable contract before the new CBA implications were understood, young player, worth giving him a try and it did expire before new contract to the new draftees were required. If the punitive new CBA did not happen, Ant would have been easy to move. They still managed to move him (and 2 SRP that they already replenished) for a much better player that should help with the team character and defensive identity. Sure, there are issues (Age, Contract), but the Blazers did manage to upgrade the talent for sure.

Grant is the big issue, his contract was a late ditch effort to keep Dame, it was also more palatable before the new CBA implications were obvious.

The good news is that despite all of these transitional moves - the Blazers still managed to find talent in all these position and are much better positioned to be good in the future.

You can use these same type of justifications to explain Meyers Leonard, Allen Crabbe, and Evan Turner contracts.

At some point these need to be judged as mistakes and dumb moves. I don't expect the GM to be perfect. But literally what is one single positive value contract to a vet Cronin has handed out?

I do like a lot of Cronin draft picks and acquiring Deni/Camara were home runs. But its perfectly reasonable to be critical of the moves that accomplished nothing to get this franchise closer to contention.

 

[Wizard Mentor]

We have too many competitors for him - he's one of the hot names.

agreed, but people keep wanting a name, and it's not impossible that we get him.

 

[Rastapopoulos]

 

[andalusian]

.

At some point these need to be judged as mistakes and dumb moves. I don't expect the GM to be perfect. But literally what is one single positive value contract to a vet Cronin has handed out?

Nurkic because it allowed him to make the Tou, Deni trades.

.
I do like a lot of Cronin draft picks and acquiring Deni/Camara were home runs. But its perfectly reasonable to be critical of the moves that accomplished nothing to get this franchise closer to contention.

It seems unreasonable to me to accept that Tou and Deni were home runs when they were part of the DA trade, but than be upset that he did not get even more value form DA when you just said you do not expect him to hit everything.

It was a swing for the fences, parts of it worked, parts did not, that's fine.

But, if you want to complain about every part of the transaction, go ahead. I choose to look at it as the "cost of doing business".

 

[Blazer Freak]

Again, thats all great and dandy, but the whole flexibility and cap stuff for Ayton was not handled the same way for Ant. We took on an aging PG who is owed 105 million through his age 37 season.

If everyone waited until the end of the offseason to judge any moves, this place would be a ghost town.

Completely normal for fans to direct moves and state their like or dislike for the moves one by one.

Someone can love the trade down in the draft to accumulate more assets and still scratch their heads on the Ant deal, but end up loving the overall offseason the team has.

1) I understand and I'm not saying that people shouldn't react and comment about each move. It's fun and differing opinions are awesome to discuss. It just seems like there is zero nuance to many of the discussions here. Moves are judged as if they can't be part of a bigger plan sometimes and it's mind boggling to me.

2) As far as taking on Jrue, I think it has more to do with the overall offseason plan for the roster and how our teams finances will be structured. In this CBA you MUST have a large salary in order to complete trades for any potential star player. If they knew Ayton was being traded for another expiring or bought out and they have plans to move JG this summer, we have literally 0 long-term high value contracts on our books. Even with JG and Jrue we still have $55M in cap space next summer right now. If they are telling the truth about keeping Jrue, then paying him $30M this season to be a 3rd guard, vet influence and hopefully show last year was not the beginning of a decline, he then only has two years left on the deal and one year before becoming an expiring.

 

[wizenheimer]

You can use these same type of justifications to explain Meyers Leonard, Allen Crabbe, and Evan Turner contracts.

At some point these need to be judged as mistakes and dumb moves. I don't expect the GM to be perfect. But literally what is one single positive value contract to a vet Cronin has handed out?

I do like a lot of Cronin draft picks and acquiring Deni/Camara were home runs. But its perfectly reasonable to be critical of the moves that accomplished nothing to get this franchise closer to contention.

yeah, so far, Cronin failed the contract tests. He overpaid Simons, Nurkic, and Grant. The Dame extension was just boiler-plate cost of keeping a superstar. He matched the Thybulle offer sheet and gave Payton a max MLE. Hopefully, he can restrain himself on the Camara and Sharpe extensions

to his credit, Cronin seems willing to erase his mistakes instead of constantly doubling-down like Olshey. He traded Payton a few months after signing him. He added a couple of 2nd's to Simons and moved him. And now, less than 2 years after making Ayton the center-piece of the Dame trade, at the time saying that Ayton was "a top-5 C with room to grow", he dumps him in a buyout

there's still Grant and maybe there's a trade on the horizon. But the thing is, Grant's skills actually fit this Blazer roster much better than either Simons or Ayton (I'm speaking 2023-24 Grant, not 2024-25 Grant). Yeah, it would be best if his salary was half what it was, but ya can't win-em-all

 

[Blazer Freak]

I would submit not every move. Moves like Tou and Deni have been very good. But in the case of Ant, Grant and Ayton, didn't Joe re-sign Ant, re-sign Grant and trade for Ayton? So it seems reasonable to question why he did that for quite a bit of money only to let 2 of them go so far for even a more expensive contract, or to let them walk for nothing but some unknown cap space, yes? And yes, Tou came with Ayton but no one had any idea Camara would turn into what he has, which is a very good defensive player and a still somewhat limited offensive player. Schmitz may have liked him as a Draft prospect, but it's fair to say he has completely outperformed his Draft slot.

Yes and no. In a vaccum I can see your point, but I also think the last 1-2 years has shown many teams how prohibitive this CBA has come to competing over a long time span. This has snowballed into how NBA teams are viewing contracts right now which kind of puts the whole league and trade values in limbo because we have players playing on contracts from the previous CBA where the value and salaries just do not match at this point.

 

[PDXFonz]

It’s not too far of a stretch to presume this was the plan all along and that maybe we see more deals go down when FA officially begins.

 

[HailBlazers]

Man the blood is in the water to land DOMINAYTON.

 

[sheed30]

This forum can be such a joke sometimes LOL every move gets critiqued on its own like these people entire careers isn't planning out and mocking how each team is potentially going to play things.

Cronin goes to my gym and I've talked to him quite a few times from which I can say he is clearly not an idiot.

They value their flexibility of their books, right now and my guess is that they shopped DA and only got offers for players with contracts past this year. Rather than taking back big money for more than a year, they waive him, save potentially on the buyout allowing them to use full MLE if they want to/find a good fit and open a roster spot.

We have a Camara extension coming, and new potential deal for Shaedon. We have Deni on an absolute steal of a contract that allows us some room to build out this roster as we grow.

We've all wanted Simons, Grant and Ayton gone. 2/3 are done before FA. Let's see what we else is on the agenda and evaluate the offseason as whole.

100% agree

 

[blazerkor]

Yeah, I have no problem with this. The only problem I have with the Ant trade is that it put more money on the books long term but I still think that Jrue could be very tradeable and might even be traded before he ever plays a game here.

I'm just in wait and see mode. No judgement until opening night and still there never is a final judgment.

I really do hope that Scoot, Shaedon, Tou, Deni and Clingan are the starters for our team at some point this season.

 

[HailBlazers]

via DusterBuster realgm:

 

[Sheldon Shape]

I've been pretty critical of Cronin in the past, but I gotta say I'm pretty happy with what's happening. You can't say he isn't being active.

 

[kjironman1]

For some players, signing a humongous, life-altering contract is their undoing. My working theory is that Ayton is one of those people.

Probably the best working theory out there. It’s pretty much spot on in certain cases.