I know Cronin is getting a lot of hate today, and he probably deserves some of it; maybe most of it.
but I suspect just about all of what he did at the trade deadline was confined within the parameters of the orders he had from Seattle. My feeling is that the absentee Vulcan landlords are a bigger problem than Cronin. It worries me because I think those TPE's the Blazers have are valuable, and will become steadily more valuable as next season's trade deadline approaches and I'm unconvinced Seattle will allow the Blazer GM to use them
another thing I suspect is that Cronin got pressure from Seattle to make that Clippers trade because of Jody Allen's relationship with Steve Ballmer. Yeah, that's probably tin-foil hat, but the coincidences are pretty significant
anyway, what I worry about is the cheap-screw math by the Vulcans. For example, say the Blazers win the 3rd pick in the lottery. Going by the last draft (Mobley) and adjusting to the new salary cap, the 3rd pick's salary from this draft would have a 1st year salary of 9M. Now, generically, I'd give the Vulcans enough credit to know that a 3rd pick for Grant is too high a price. But it may be that Vulcan-Think would tell them that Grant's 20M salary next season should be adjusted to an actual cost of 11M by subtracting the cost of that 3rd pick. Yeah, that would be pretty stupid but does that really seem out-of-line compared to what we know about Vulcan-Think? I mean, they had nearly a decade of reasons to fire Olshey's arrogant ass, but they waited till they could make a case for firing him with cause (am I the only one who expects Olshey to file a lawsuit about that?)
what be a real disaster is if the Blazers trade a top-6 pick + that big TPE for Grant.....yeeeeeeesh, that's a scary thought....they wouldn't do that would they?
