I transcribed this shit...
Hasn’t spoken to Dame since the trade request.
“That is obviously a place that he wants to be and that makes sense for him as far as the rest of the makeup as a team and all that. As a team you always hope that you have more options, and to have limited options like that, I wouldn’t call it frustrating, but it prevents you from seeking out the best return… so it’s something we will have to work through.”
What changed about building around Dame?
“Building around Dame has always been the goal, all the way even through the draft. The difficult things that we ran into were finding the right deals. In the previous two years we drafted at 7 and we drafted at 3. In the meantime we were scouring the market looking for more win-now players. What kept happening was those players just weren’t available. So each time we tried to weigh that, so in Shaedon’s draft, pick 7 what does that look like versus what is available on the market and the answer was obvious… Shaedon is better. And the same thing happened this time. What does pick 3 look like versus the return on the market, and it wasn’t close. Had to go 3. So it wasn’t necessarily intentional, it was just doing what’s best for this team and we kept doing that and I could see why Dame would look at it and say well this isn’t a win-now opportunity, or at least as much of a win-now opportunity as some other places. So from that regard I understand his position and I respect it, and it makes sense to me why he would look to go elsewhere.”
What’s your goal right now?
“In any deal the goal is to come out with the best outcome. So for us that can be many different things. It could be more of a win-now player and that would be intriguing to us, it could be a young player and picks and that would be intriguing, it could be just picks and we would look at that as well. For us it’s how can we maximize this return. And I don’t think we have any set parameters it’s we would evaluate each deal case by case and choose the best one.”
If it’s to get a win-now player, is there a better win-now player out there than Damian Lillard?
“There is not.”
What happened with free agency?
“Well free agency, the top priority was to retain Jerami Grant and we did, and then the goal was to retain Matisse Thybulle as well. Meanwhile there was a lot of different trade scenarios we were working and other free agents we were talking to. Our goal wasn’t to be super active directly in free agency. It wasn’t a market that we wanted to get heavy into. There were some players, and still are, that may make sense. But for us, the goal to improve has always been via trade and it’s continuing to work those deals.”
Does it make logical sense to want to trade Dame with Shaedon and Scoot?
“I think one thing I’ll say about Shaedon, Scoot, and Anfernee, I think they’re going to be win-now very soon. I think we saw that with Scoot the other night. He’s not your normal 19 year old. Those guys are going to impact winning very soon in this league, and I think Anfernee is the same way, where Anfernee has shown that he can be a high end, high usage, efficient scorer in this league and is ready to impact winning and get us to new levels. So I think for us it’s continuing to build, we really like our talent base with or without Dame, and how do we keep supplementing these guys and put the best talent around them.”
Isn’t it best to just trade Dame anyway?
“To this persons point, how do you replace Damian Lillard? Who is the person on the market place that is available that is a better player than Dame? No team more than us knows what this market looks like. We have been trying for 18 months to find the Dame equivalent at another position, or someone that is 80% of Dame even. That is the challenge and that is where we have to keep working it.”
How do you balance doing right by Dame versus the best interest of the Trail Blazers?
“Dame is obviously a very important person and player to us, that what the rest of his career looks like matters to us and we care about that. At the same time we have to do what’s best for us. We’ve got to find the right deal and find the right makeup of the team that we’re going to build forward with. So you hope that you can find that perfect situation where that lines up and he goes to a place that he wants to and you get the best return possible. It’s complicated and it usually doesn’t work out just like that, but my history has shown that I’ve done this with CJ McCollum and Josh Hart where we worked together to find them good landing spots and getting a fair return for the Trail Blazers. So it’s possible but there’s a lot of work involved and often it involves more than just one destination.”
(Can’t hear the question)
“It can complicate it because it’s louder than your normal situation, especially ones that we’ve dealt with recently. At the same time, you just try to keep perspective and understand that let’s focus on what matters here. Whether there’s all this external noise, the fact remains that we want to do what’s best for team and he wants to get to a spot that makes the most sense for him. So trying to keep our eye on the ball as much as we can and avoid as many distractions and curve balls as possible.”
Do you have hope that this can be salvaged?
“I haven’t lost hope just because I understand that this league is complicated, and things change very quickly. Sometimes it’s that we gain more information, sometimes things aren’t what we thought they were, and it’s just something that in this league we constantly have to stay nimble and adjust to changing circumstances and I view it like that. I don’t know what the future holds, I don’t know will end up happening here, just knowing that I won’t be surprised if something different happens than what we were originally expecting.”
Were you surprised by the trade request?
“I wouldn’t say surprised. Dame has been great about communicating with us throughout his career. Over the last three months since the season ended we have had numerous, numerous meetings with Dame where we understood his perspective and what his concerns were. So when those concerns weren’t addressed by July 1st, I understood why he went in that direction. It made sense to me. It didn’t surprise me, I wouldn’t say. Any time a player that you care about that much brings that news to you, it does jolt you. So when you finally hear the truth, or you finally face that reality, it was jolting. But I wouldn’t say surprising because I knew that he had concerns about the direction we were headed.”
Was there a pathway that could have got you there?
“There was so many deals that we were constantly talking through with teams and so many that you think that are right there and then you lose it, or it resurfaces. So I don’t know if we had anything teed up incredibly where we thought it was a 90% chance of happening, but there was a dozen deals that made sense for us that had a pretty good chance of happening. So I would have liked to have seen how that would have played out, but I understand by July 1st if you don’t have it, you may not have it two weeks later either.”
A lot of the same issues with size and depth.
“What I have really done for the most part since the trade request is to press pause as far as transacting because I wanted to keep some flexibility with the back of our roster. We have some roster spots right now, certain deals that we could be doing would be 3 for 1 kind of things where we’re going to need some roster spots. But with that you see guys going off the board, so we try to keep as much warm as we can with the free agents that we’re talking to but they can only wait so long. So those are the ripple effects of something like this that does just kinda make you press pause. And we’re not alone in that, there’s other teams that I think are doing the same thing, where it’s okay let’s maintain flexibility here because there could be some fairly big player movement happening.”
There has been a lot of these trad requests happening recently. What lessons have you taken?
“I think what I have learned more than anything is that patience is critical. Don’t be reactive, don’t jump at things to seemingly solve a problem. I think the teams that have ended up in the most positive situation post trade have been the ones who have been really diligent, and taken their time, and not been impulsive or the teams that really kept their urgency under control. So I think that’s how my approach has been with this and will be with this. We are going to be patient, we’re going to do what’s best for our team and we’re going to see how this lands. And if it takes months, it takes months.”
Do you feel like you did everything that you possibly could to build around Dame?
“I don’t feel that I did everything because I wasn’t able to get done what we had hoped to get done. The effort being there, which it was, that’s one thing. But actually following through and getting the result is a whole nother. So to that extent I do feel like I failed Dame. Where our goal was always to build around him, and to be as high level as possible as quickly as possible. And whether even internally if we thought that well, hey we’re going in the right direction here, we can get there pretty quickly… if he didn’t feel that it was still a failure on my end. And just not finding that right deal.”
