So you are honestly trying to argue that since the Blazers made a mistake 7 years prior in 2005 with different leadership they decided 2012 was going to be the year they had to find their PGOTF?
what I said was that once it was clear to them that Telfaire wasn't the PGOTF, they began a search that almost seemed desperate and lasted for several years until they had the opportunity for Dame.
KP had his lame-ass
"bake-a-cake-then-capspace" plan that was going to complete the Roy-Oden team and he spent it on Andre Miller. They drafted Taurean Green. They rolled the dice with a 1st round pick on Sergio Rodriguez and KP admitted later that Paul Millsap was higher on their target list. The Blazers tried hard to get into trade talks when Deron and CP3 were being shopped but didn't have the assets. They wasted a 1st round pick on Nolan Smith and brought Steve Blake back 37 times after trading him away. They invested a lottery pick in Jerryd Bayless. They tried to trade up to draft Ty Lawson. They drafted Patty Mills & Armon Johnson. They traded for Ray Felton and Jonny Flynn
Portland spent at least 5 seasons thrashing around wildly trying to find that PGOTF. It didn't just start in 2012
I know Olshey didn't trade for that pick, that has nothing to do with who he chose with it.
would Olshey have been able to draft Dame with the 11th pick? almost certainly not. So yeah, the pick he 'used' on Dame he wasn't responsible for acquiring, so at the minimum, you have to give Chad Buchanen a big chunk of the credit for getting Dame to Portland.
Plus, Olshey had the final say so he didn't have to pick Lillard just because he had been previously wanted by scouts. Also just because a team targets one player it doesn't make that person the obvious choice.
but none of that addresses the 'fact' that two different reporters on the Blazer beat talked about how the Blazer scouting staff had been all over Lillard as a prospect long before Olshey arrived. Unless you dispute they said those things?
look, Rich Cho was fired in May, 2011. Olshey wasn't hired for more than a year later in June, 2012....about 2-3 weeks before the draft. Teams don't start building their draft books less then a month prior to drafts, they build them over months and seasons, And in the case of a player like Lillard, one with a 4 year college career, those scouting reports stretch back a long time. This is not a radical concept
I'm not trying to take all the credit away from Olshey on picking Dame. I'm just pushing back on the "he drafted Dame so he's a great drafter" narrative. He was the GM at the time. But it's pretty clear that Olshey arrived into a situation that had a well developed priority list of targets and Dame was high on the list. Maybe he brought his own recollections of the Clipper book with him and Dame was high on that list as well. It would be surprising with Chris Paul being in place, but I'd certainly grant Olshey probably knew about Dame before he arrived in Portland
