But this podcast happened 3 weeks before the draft. They got it out for a reason. I am certain they told enough people what they wanted - at this point they already had an idea that Scoot is likely going to fall to them and they had him in, so if they told everyone 3 weeks before what they are looking for and a week later someone calls them and say let's talk about something less - why would they waste the time?
I do not believe for a minute that people (other teams) did not know what it would take to get Portland to trade that pick closer to the draft and Portland refused to listen to something that fell within these parameters. Just makes no sense. Portland knew what their options were (Miller or Scoot), knew they liked them enough to understand what it would take to trade the pick - presented it to teams before and refused wasting time on it for subpar offers. That's just good business.
To me, this seems like a bullshit story that Portland did not try to build around Dame. If that was the case they would not have gone through the entire Grant process and they would not have tried to accumulate assets, but controlling what they can (asset accumulation) and working the trades are not the same - and with Dame singing everywhere about how he does not want to play with 19 year old players anymore - he tanked the trade process.
So, no, I do not believe for a minute the FO had an agenda against Dame. If they did, they would not have signed him to a 2 years extension after he was out with a big injury and no-one knew if he would recover. That's just bullshit to me.
Dame got tired of waiting, fine. But I am not putting this on the FO, they are working a lot more logically than the previous one has from what we have seen.
