Cronin interview on 1080

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Talks about
  • Mike Schmitz hiring - started recruiting him at the combine.
  • Process of looking into trading the 7th pick
  • Drafting Sharpe and Jabari

  • Injury update on Sharpe - we will know more when he sees a specialist this week. He saw Shaedon yesterday and he said it feels good.
  • Sharpe missing SL - he was disappointed but it's big picture with Shaedon. It would have been great to get him those reps. But him being there and seeing what it takes on a day to day basis and seeing their brand of basketball was still beneficial.

  • How do you view their roles? Dream scenario across the roster is we would love competition at each position and each spot in the rotation. If you want a spot you need to come in and earn it. If you're the best player you'll get minutes.

  • How do you feel about the 3 spot? Definitely our biggest unknown but we're not especially concerned with it. Can Nas come back healthy? He looks great and everything is on track. Josh Hart can play there. GP plays big. Sharpe is talented. Walker has shown he's capable of coming in and being more than functional. It's an unknown position but at the same time we like the talent level that's there.

  • What was your emphasis at the start of the offseason? I have said throughout my time that we need to get more talented and to be more specific we need to be more talented defensively. We need guys who can compete and get stops. Make things easier on our offense. It was a big point of emphasis in free agency and trades.

  • Size in the frontcourt - we understand we're a little undersized, but we didn't think at this time in the retool that we would have a perfectly blended roster. We were more focused on getting the right guys. Talent acquisition. The right demeanor for what we're trying to do. And then for whatever inconsistencies we have across the five positions we're going to have to have guys adapt. Maybe we play small. Maybe young guys step up. Maybe we get funky with our rotations. We feel like we have enough talent there but we understand that there's certain situations where lack of size is an issue. We just didn't think at this point we would have a perfectly balanced roster.

  • Are you guys done this offseason? I don't think you'll ever hear me say we're done. There are points where you use up all your tools. Whether it's exceptions or trade pieces or picks or whatever. I don't think there's moments where you can say you're going and going because you run out of tools. At this point I don't think we're out of tools and we're not content with where we're at. From our mentality we're just not good enough to say we're done (paraphrasing.) I want to stay aggressive and build this the quickest way we can.

  • Where do you think you stack up if this is the roster? It's a tough conference. The thing I point to is that a healthy Dame you're always competitive. Do you put enough quality pieces around him to take that next step? That's our challenge that we're trying to accomplish and I feel like we've taken steps in that direction, but we would all agree that we're not there yet. I think we're going to be very competitive but I don't have massive expectations that this team will make this benchmark. I want to see them come out and play the style of basketball that we're trying to build here. Be competitive, be defensive minded and play together. I think our talent base if we do those things will take us to pretty good levels and then we have to build from there.

  • Is there any talk of a G league team? We are just talking about this yesterday and it's something we're interested in, but it has to make sense in terms of location and financials. It's something we believe in and it's important part of player development and staff development.

  • Talks about Dame re-signing.

I had to paraphrase some of this. Dude talks a lot. This would be a long post lol
 
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Freshtown said:
Anything noteworthy?
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Shaedon is seeing a specialist this week but Sharpe said he feels good. Org is prioritizing long term health with him.

Joe wants competition and depth at each spot and thinks Chauncey is open to playing both Sharpe and Jabari if they earn the spot.

The SF spot is our "biggest unknown" right now. Nas looks healthy and great right now. Hart is more of a 2 but plays big. GP2 plays big. Shaedon is really talented, Jabari is capable. You can't just slot one guy for 32 mins at that spot yet, but we like the talent level overall.

Adding defensive talent was a big point of emphasis. Need guys who have a tough mindset who can play the way Chauncey wants to.

We are a little undersized, but we didn't think at this stage in our retool that we would have a perfectly blended roster. We were more focused on talent acquisition. We are just going to have guys adapt. Maybe we get funky in rotations and have Winslow/Grant/Walker/Watford/Eubanks competing for center minutes. We didn't think we'd have a perfectly balanced roster yet.

We still have some tools and we aren't content with where we are yet. From our mentality, we aren't good enough to say we are done. But at the same time, we want to see this roster grow and evaluate it after watching it with a healthy Dame. The only guy who has played with a healthy Dame is Nurk.

I think we'll be very competitive this year, but we will all admit that aren't there yet. I don't have expectations of a benchmark for this team outside of playing the kind of ball we are trying to build here.

We are definitely interested in a GLeague team and we want to make sure the locations and financials make sense. We think it's important from a player AND staff development standpoint.
 
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Very good interview...Sprague must be on vacation. No breaking news but Cronin said something I've thought about in that we need to see Dame play with all the new pieces and until then we don't have a measuring stick for who fits where and for how long...basically Dame has only played with Nurk for extended minutes. Joe said that Winslow will slide to the 5 when they need it but that we'll see which young guys step up and earn minutes. Basically a big part of getting better is learning to play together and building chemistry but my favorite....I don't think I'll ever say I'm done trying to improve the roster. He also said we have guys that play a lot bigger than their size in Hart, Winslow and Payton.
 
The problem with Bend unfortunately is the lack of venues and commuting back and forth from Portland over the mountains is a hassle.

I think any GLeague team could benefit from playing in Portland itself. Maybe split time between Moda and the MC.
 
illmatic99 said:
The problem with Bend unfortunately is the lack of venues and commuting back and forth from Portland over the mountains is a hassle.

I think any GLeague team could benefit from playing in Portland itself. Maybe split time between Moda and the MC.
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You don't think they'd just buy into an existing team?
 
illmatic99 said:
The problem with Bend unfortunately is the lack of venues and commuting back and forth from Portland over the mountains is a hassle.

I think any GLeague team could benefit from playing in Portland itself. Maybe split time between Moda and the MC.
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If they were smart, they would do this, but do it in Vancouver WA. Continue making inroads into that state.
 
Natebishop3 said:
You don't think they'd just buy into an existing team?
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If it were up to me, geographical proximity to the big team would be a priority to shuffle players/coaches back and forth. If they buy an existing team, they would have to move it to the area. But I can also see the benefits of building a team from the ground up and make it a true farm system. Kinda like the Santa Cruz Warriors. What a missed opportunity from Olshey all these years...
 
theprunetang said:
If they were smart, they would do this, but do it in Vancouver WA. Continue making inroads into that state.
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Where would they play though? Are there any decent basketball arenas in Vancouver? I literally have no idea.
 
illmatic99 said:
If it were up to me, geographical proximity to the big team would be a priority to shuffle players/coaches back and forth. If they buy an existing team, they would have to move it to the area. But I can also see the benefits of building a team from the ground up and make it a true farm system. Kinda like the Santa Cruz Warriors. What a missed opportunity from Olshey all these years...
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How exactly would that work since we are only allowed to have 2 players on the team under contract?
Seems like the whole G League is a farm system that all teams have access to.
 
Pinwheel1 said:
How exactly would that work since we are only allowed to have 2 players on the team under contract?
Seems like the whole G League is a farm system that all teams have access to.
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what is this rule of only 2 players?

Two-way players can be sent down any number of times.

I thought any player with less than 3 yrs experience can be sent down without limitation.

I meant a farm system not just for players, but coaches can also coordinate practices the same way Billups does. They can be used as trial versions if we want to test new strategies or workflows. And we can send players down who are rehabbing from injury, etc etc.
 
illmatic99 said:
what is this rule of only 2 players?

Two-way players can be sent down any number of times.

I thought any player with less than 3 yrs experience can be sent down without limitation.

I meant a farm system not just for players, but coaches can also coordinate practices the same way Billups does. They can be used as trial versions if we want to test new strategies or workflows. And we can send players down who are rehabbing from injury, etc etc.
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I see. I guess that can be helpful. I am a little skeptical of it benefiting anyone other than the 2-way players but I have not really been paying attention to how other teams use it.
 
Idog1976 said:
Does Phil Knight live in Eugene?
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Phil Knight lives wherever he wants to but he owns Eugene for the most part. Built a state of the art basketball arena as well. Everything is here already including a huge student population..better than the Boise Idaho Stampede as far as ticket sales I'm sure. He donated half a billion dollars to the U of O....I'd say he's pretty invested here.
 
riverman said:
Phil Knight lives wherever he wants to but he owns Eugene for the most part. Built a state of the art basketball arena as well. Everything is here already including a huge student population..better than the Boise Idaho Stampede as far as ticket sales I'm sure.
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And much like the "Idaho Stampede", our G-League team could be named after the state instead of the city. The Oregon Explorers (or something much, much better).
 
Pinwheel1 said:
I see. I guess that can be helpful. I am a little skeptical of it benefiting anyone other than the 2-way players but I have not really been paying attention to how other teams use it.
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It's been good for young coaches to learn the ropes too. Right now if the Blazers send someone down they're playing for another organization that has no reason to develop someone else's players and you also can't force them to work specifically on certain areas. Take Greg Brown for example, if they had their own G-League team every day with him down there they'd have custom coaching/workouts to improve certain areas instead of just randomly playing on someone else's team.

I do think they're headed towards making each team have a minor league G-League team, I'm surprised they haven't yet since Portland is one of the only holdouts to it. With that would come a different set of rules most likely, including expanding the draft. I think it would really help bolster the G-League if it was more like "look at all this young talent Orlando has on their G-League squad" or whatever. I'd definitely pay attention more.
 
Hopefully this will help quell the outrage of never being able to ask these questions outside of a free agent press conference...
 
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