OK, I just noticed this recent Olshey quote in an article on why Olshey's belief that Collins will develop as quickly as McCollum may not be true:
So, he is talking about McCollum here and I guess the guy who McCollum would be subordinate to was Matthews:
“...everybody in the gym knew how good he was, but because we were trying to appease the marketplace and trying to bring in a guy that we thought had a higher level of trust with the coaching staff, we kept a guy (McCollum) subordinate to him for an extra year, where we would have been far better off playing CJ sooner rather than later.”
Can someone translate the Olshey talk for me? "appease the marketplace"? Does that mean he was afraid if McCollum played more that Matthews would be less likely to re-sign with Portland (this was before the Matthews injury)? And "trying to bring in a guy we thought had a higher level of trust with the coaching staff"? Is he talking about Affalo here; and basically trying to blame the coaching staff for the disastrous trade of Barton and a first round pick for him?
Look, (intentional) you are the GM, if you and your assistants and scouts knew how good McCollum was and didn't think Affalo was so good; why didn't you make the call? Why does the coach make the call? And if Stotts was wrong about McCollum being ready and wrong about Affalo being the guy, why didn't you fire him? Or quit yourself for being so passive and making bad decisions?
BTW, the rest of the article is interesting:
https://www.blazersedge.com/2018/8/...ccollum-wesley-matthews-ed-davis-blazers-nets