Trade Hart/Winslow/Didi/Keon/pick or CJ/Norm/Nance/Roco?

[THE HCP]

Not sure what you're getting at. But if 3 of the guys I listed play most of the season we're going to make the playoffs. If Little also plays most of the season we could be top 5 or 6.

If we get another legit starting forward with our pick we could compete for HCA.

Dame and Ant are freaking good. Their defense just isn't good enough to make us elite. That'll hurt in the playoffs.

We can trade Dame at any point and be right in the midst of a youth movement. And I think if things aren't looking great next season Dame might just agree to that...

WHAT!!!??? You think we have talent on this roster to be a 5 seed!!! Wow!

 

[BoBoBREWSKI]

"Long Run" & "Only time will tell" are 2 terms we can't afford to use with Dame and his window..... if we are in that mode, let's just ship him out now while we can.

This summer/offseason. Pay attention dummy. Love you.

 

[oldmangrouch]

"so little value" assumes there was a lot more value to be had

but I have NOT seen a shred of evidence that is true....just a lot of assumption it had to be true because, well, just because some want it to be true. What if it wasn't true? Should the Blazers have just rebooted the same type of roster for an 8th year that had failed for 7 straight years?

No offense, but I think you missed my point. Even if this was the best deal possible, CJ was the best player involved and we suffered a downgrade in talent. Calling it addition-by-subtraction is a needless insult to a good player who by all accounts was also a good citizen.

Call it what it was - a deal motivated primarily by financial issues.

 

[wizenheimer]

Call it what it was - a deal motivated primarily by financial issues.

"motivated primarily"....if that's true then it shouldn't be Cronin getting all the blame; it should be the Vulcans...and it should be the CBA. The only way Portland was going to keep the 4 players the dumb poll in this thread talks about was if Olshey was still the GM. Anybody who would have taken over that duty once Olshey was fired would have almost certainly dismantled the roster like Cronin did. There was never going to be an 8th reboot.

finance may have been the #1 priority. But I think it's clear there was an institutional awareness that the Dame/CJ experiment needed to be ended, and the Blazers chose Dame and moved on from CJ. Easy choice, right choice

 

[Pinwheel1]

No offense, but I think you missed my point. Even if this was the best deal possible, CJ was the best player involved and we suffered a downgrade in talent. Calling it addition-by-subtraction is a needless insult to a good player who by all accounts was also a good citizen.

Call it what it was - a deal motivated primarily by financial issues.

Sure financial issues were a factor. The league rewards teams that are within the Cap. The only reason you should be way over the cap is if you are rewarding your players for winning. Paying both Dame and CJ big contracts was worth it. Paying Dame, CJ and Simons did not make sense when you have other positions to pay.

Yes CJ was the best player involved. I wish more fans gave him this respect when he was still on the team. But that is moot at this point.
The question is did we suffer a downgrade in talent when you have Simons and Hart to replace him? I don't think so.

As for Norm, did we suffer a downgrade at SF if it opens more minutes for Little and Winslow? I say no

PF is yet to be determined but I would be shocked if we didn't end up with at least equal value to what we had to start the season.

You can certainly make a case that we should have gotten more for CJ, but I would argue that there wasn't any drop-off in overall talent. But we do need to see what happens in the next few months to confirm that.

 

[Phatguysrule]

WHAT!!!??? You think we have talent on this roster to be a 5 seed!!! Wow!

As good as Minnesota? Once we fill in the rest of the roster. Sure. That's 45-49 wins. Absolutely, if Dame is back at 100%, with Ant who hits 3s off the catch at over 40% and Hart can as well... Absolutely there is enough there if we fill out the roster with good defenders.

*Edit*
To clarify, that isn't a prediction, I'm simply saying it's possible. But they will make the playoffs unless they are saddled by injuries or Dame isn't 100%.

 

[oldmangrouch]

"motivated primarily"....if that's true then it shouldn't be Cronin getting all the blame; it should be the Vulcans...and it should be the CBA. The only way Portland was going to keep the 4 players the dumb poll in this thread talks about was if Olshey was still the GM. Anybody who would have taken over that duty once Olshey was fired would have almost certainly dismantled the roster like Cronin did. There was never going to be an 8th reboot.

finance may have been the #1 priority. But I think it's clear there was an institutional awareness that the Dame/CJ experiment needed to be ended, and the Blazers chose Dame and moved on from CJ. Easy choice, right choice

I agree that the problem starts at the top. We don't know for sure if Cronin was unable to come up with a better plan, was unable to sell a different plan to Jody, actually embraced the plan, or just shrugged and blindly followed orders. None of those scenarios convinces me Cronin should be in charge of what is indoubtably a tough rebuild.

 

[Phatguysrule]

No offense, but I think you missed my point. Even if this was the best deal possible, CJ was the best player involved and we suffered a downgrade in talent. Calling it addition-by-subtraction is a needless insult to a good player who by all accounts was also a good citizen.

Call it what it was - a deal motivated primarily by financial issues.

It was a deal motivated by poor fit and financial issues. We couldn't get better and keep CJ.

The reality is that his contract was addition by subtraction.

It's not a dis on CJ to admit that he is duplication with Dame and Ant, and that he isn't as good as Dame, but makes too much to keep.

 

[Phatguysrule]

Yeah you're right. But still think we could find better value for Norm even without RoCo. Still think we could get a 1st for Norm, and if you made it a 3-team deal you could mess with the salaries to still get the $20M TPE. Or combine the Grant deal to it.

I don't think these were options. Nobody wanted Norm on that contract for 5 years.

Far better off to just keep your first rounder and get a guy that good on a rookie deal.

 

[Pinwheel1]

As good as Minnesota? Once we fill in the rest of the roster. Sure. That's 45-49 wins. Absolutely, if Dame is back at 100%, with Ant who hits 3s off the catch at over 40% and Hart can as well... Absolutely there is enough there if we fill out the roster with good defenders.

*Edit*
To clarify, that isn't a prediction, I'm simply saying it's possible. But they will make the playoffs unless they are saddled by injuries or Dame isn't 100%.

Yep, health is hard to predict for everyone. Lakers, Clippers, Warriors, Pelicans (Zion)
When you look at Utah on paper, they are not that impressive. It will be interesting to see what they do in the off-season.

 

[Ed O]

We can trade Dame at any point and be right in the midst of a youth movement. And I think if things aren't looking great next season Dame might just agree to that...

But Dame will be a year older and teams will know we need to trade him.

Why keep him so we can HOPEFULLY get home court advantage in the playoffs, knowing that we'll get an inferior return when Dame finally wants out?

 

[Phatguysrule]

But Dame will be a year older and teams will know we need to trade him.

Why keep him so we can HOPEFULLY get home court advantage in the playoffs, knowing that we'll get an inferior return when Dame finally wants out?

If Dame is playing at an MVP level we'll get better value in return than if we trade him right now.

Since we're working with Dame he's not likely to turn this into a Harden/Simmons situation. As long as Dame is healthy the best value we'll get for him would be by the deadline next season, IMO.

We're willing to take this as far as he wants. He'll know next season if staying and trying it here will make him happy.

 

[Phatguysrule]

I won't speak for others, but I wasn't fond of their contracts and I was OK with trading them. What I don't agree with is the addition-by-subtraction argument that we had to dump them so urgently that it was OK to get little or no value in return. IMHO that argument only applies to players who are poison in the locker-room, not players who are good guys and good players but a flawed fit. YMMV.

We had to dump them urgently so that we could tank and avoid the repeater tax. I believe it's pretty well understood that this was a mandate from ownership. They were not going to pay the repeater tax.

 

[Pinwheel1]

We had to dump them urgently so that we could tank and avoid the repeater tax. I believe it's pretty well understood that this was a mandate from ownership. They were not going to pay the repeater tax.

Nor should they have to. There are times when owners should pay it and times when they should look to avoid it. I would say this was the time not to repeat it.

 

[wizenheimer]

But Dame will be a year older and teams will know we need to trade him.

Why keep him so we can HOPEFULLY get home court advantage in the playoffs, knowing that we'll get an inferior return when Dame finally wants out?

obviously...that's why San Antonio traded Duncan and Dallas traded Dirk before they aged out. They understood that trade value was the only value worth considering

 

[calvin natt]

It’s legit crazy to me that people talk like they know what the Blazers could have had or done but didn’t. Like they were in the room. If you weren’t in the room or know someone who was, you don’t know.

 

[oldmangrouch]

It’s legit crazy to me that people talk like they know what the Blazers could have had or done but didn’t. Like they were in the room. If you weren’t in the room or know someone who was, you don’t know.

Stop being reasonable!!

 

[blazerkor]

It’s legit crazy to me that people talk like they know what the Blazers could have had or done but didn’t. Like they were in the room. If you weren’t in the room or know someone who was, you don’t know.

You're right but there is one thing we can know. Norm and RoCo were a part of the first big trade of this past trade season and that means that all avenues could not have possibly been exhausted just because if anyone in the front office had a brain which I think they did, they knew that other trades would be made and some teams would miss out on initial trade targets. So at the very least we know that trade which most definitely didn't bring back more value than it sent out, was rushed. Cronin said that teams knew that he had to get us under the tax and that was a hindrance, yet he pulls the trigger first with people holding shit over his head that gave him a negotiating disadvantage. Not impressive.

The real thing that I can't know, that makes it hard to criticize any NBA Exec ever is if ownership forced his hand but Olshey got away with a lot of shit so if Kolde or someone did force Joe's hand it just points out again that Joe isn't a very good negotiator. He's a guy that can't manage his boss(es) which is a very important skill for anyone that directly reports to someone else, especially when Joe is supposed to be the tenured basketball exec and Vulcans have their hands in too many pies to be close to the expert he should be.

 

[THE HCP]

It’s legit crazy to me that people talk like they know what the Blazers could have had or done but didn’t. Like they were in the room. If you weren’t in the room or know someone who was, you don’t know.

YOU RANG FAMS!?!

 

[Phatguysrule]

Not even neccesarily the better pick, just that if the Pelicans pick didn't convey first, then it should've been backed up by the Lakers pick if it was available. New Orleans was willing to give up what was the 8th Pick at the time (their own) and somehow, if the trade worked out and they made the playoffs or their pick moved into the top 4, they weren't willing to back up those scenarios with a pick likely to be 8-10 that they didn't seem likely to have? The condition is literally a better outcome for them than the initial, expected trade, yet Cronin couldn't negotiate that as part of the deal.

I think the "initial expected trade" was Portland heavy given that other teams knew we were going to trade CJ and that our ownership gave every indication that they were not interested in paying the repeater tax.

Everybody knew CJ and Norm had to be moved. And nobody was excited about those contracts.

 

[calvin natt]

You're right but there is one thing we can know. Norm and RoCo were a part of the first big trade of this past trade season and that means that all avenues could not have possibly been exhausted just because if anyone in the front office had a brain which I think they did, they knew that other trades would be made and some teams would miss out on initial trade targets. So at the very least we know that trade which most definitely didn't bring back more value than it sent out, was rushed. Cronin said that teams knew that he had to get us under the tax and that was a hindrance, yet he pulls the trigger first with people holding shit over his head that gave him a negotiating disadvantage. Not impressive.

The real thing that I can't know, that makes it hard to criticize any NBA Exec ever is if ownership forced his hand but Olshey got away with a lot of shit so if Kolde or someone did force Joe's hand it just points out again that Joe isn't a very good negotiator. He's a guy that can't manage his boss(es) which is a very important skill for anyone that directly reports to someone else, especially when Joe is supposed to be the tenured basketball exec and Vulcans have their hands in too many pies to be close to the expert he should be.

I hear you but nobody manages NBA owners. Especially Joe freakin Cronin.

 

[blazerkor]

I think the "initial expected trade" was Portland heavy given that other teams knew we were going to trade CJ and that our ownership gave every indication that they were not interested in paying the repeater tax.

Everybody knew CJ and Norm had to be moved. And nobody was excited about those contracts.

We were already out of the repeater tax when CJ was traded but I get what you're saying that we didn't exactly make people feel like we valued our guys so those people didn't have to send value back when they acquired them.

 

[Tince]

CJ for Hart, Sato, and the Lakers pick. Norm to Cleveland for their pick. Combine those deals and you still get a $20.8M TPE. Keep Nance.

I do that! Only problem is I'm not sure either of those trades were on the table.

 

[wizenheimer]

I do that! Only problem is I'm not sure either of those trades were on the table.

the TPE wasn't there either

 

[SlyPokerCat]

obviously...that's why San Antonio traded Duncan and Dallas traded Dirk before they aged out. They understood that trade value was the only value worth considering

Dame doesn't have what those 2 do.

 

[OneSport3]

It’s legit crazy to me that people talk like they know what the Blazers could have had or done but didn’t. Like they were in the room. If you weren’t in the room or know someone who was, you don’t know.

What’s funnier is the people that somehow were able to gauge New Orleans’ level of desperation to get CJ.

 

[Tince]

What’s funnier is the people that somehow were able to gauge New Orleans’ level of desperation to get CJ.

We've got A LOT of NBA insiders on this board who have been privy to a ton of private conversations.

 

[beast blazer]

Hart was a good get. But where does he fit? I think its time to trade dame.

 

[wizenheimer]

Dame doesn't have what those 2 do.

like them, he's the best player in franchise history. And like them, he's shown amazing loyalty to the team that drafted him

 

[blazerkor]

What’s funnier is the people that somehow were able to gauge New Orleans’ level of desperation to get CJ.

What's funny to me is that the guys defending Cronin act like they know he did as good as a GM could with those trades, they act like they know for sure that better trades weren't available and that every possible deal that would have been better was explored. None of us know shit, the only thing we know is that we gave up a lot more production than we got back and we didn't get the draft capitol back to justify the discrepancy. The reason why is fairly inconsequential to me especially when the guy who made the move is in the middle of an interview. How in the world is he not failing his interview?