https://bleacherreport.com/articles...een-damian-lillard-and-portland-trail-blazers
I know Haynes is Dame's mouthpiece, but if there's any truth to this report there is definitely a part of me that is bitter. Cronin didn't have enough respect for Dame to even talk to him? Screw Goodwin, but Dame?
I'm looking at this timetable.
They met roughly a month ago. When did it come out that Goodwin told other teams not to try to trade for Lillard? It was quite a bit before earlier, wasn't it?
Dame demands a trade. Demands to be traded to only one team. Dame's representation tells everyone else not to even try to work a deal. Presumably, that would also mean they were discouraging other teams from even trying to talk Dame into giving them a look. Pat Riley takes this as the green light to make an obscenely light offer (Herro, 2 1RPs). Dame's PR department (Haynes, Fentress, etc). are all out there bashing Cronin and the Blazers for not doing that, pushing the narrative that Dame gave everything to the Blazers and basically the team did nothing for him so they owed him this even if was detrimental to the organization, fanbase and his current Blazer teammates.
All of that went down before late August. All of it.
I keep talking about the smell test. Again, this doesn't pass it. Conveniently, two months after demanding a trade (and watching all the posturing backfire on his "loyalty/don't run from the grind" image), he tells the Blazers if a trade can't be worked out, he wants to come back to the Blazers. WTH???? Two months of dragging the Blazers and then he tells them privately he'd be open to returning while still letting all the negative press about the Blazers float unchallenged by he or his team.
That seems, to me, extremely unlikely.
I agree with Nate. This is a parting shot, just a petty, parting shot.
And, to answer my previous question about why would Haynes lie. Haynes wasn't a reporter in this. He and Fentress let themselves become advocates. It's quite plausible that either or both of them saw their coverage of this as a path to a bigger market and a higher-paying job. They had stake in the game. And, if it's easy to believe Cronin was spiteful about how Dame's camp handled this, then it's certainly reasonable to believe Haynes and Fentress are spiteful that Dame didn't get to Miami. Fentress I know had a couple of social-media meltdowns during this that weren't really professional.
That doesn't even take into consideration that Haynes is just getting info from Dame's people again. Or that Haynes' bridges with Blazer front-office sources were effectively burned by how he covered this story ... if you worked in Cronin's office, would you give Haynes any inside or off-the-record info? I can't see why they would.
