If I were in Cronin’s shoes, in light of yesterday’s announcement by the league, I’d issue a press release saying that after weeks of discussions with the Heat the Blazers don’t see a viable path to a trade and are closing down further negotiations. The Blazers remain open to honoring Dame’s request for a trade, but only for a return package commensurate with his value to the Blazers and All-NBA talent. Barring such a trade offer being forthcoming, the Blazers will welcome Dame at fall camp.
I'd love to see that for the meltdown of the Heat fans, and the local Heat/Dame fans who want us to take pennies on the dollar.
It's wild to me seeing some of the Dame can do no wrong folks throw the Organization under the bus based on speculation. Speculation can go both ways btw and we have at least as many data points that make Dame look bad.
Consider the following: Do we even know if say Dame vetoed trades of CJ in the past? No we don't, but I strongly suspect Lillard has had a LeBron type influence of arm chair GM for like at least 6 years or so. Look at the Blevins non-sense. I note CJ wasn't traded until he stepped out-of-bounds during Dame's Super Saiyan game against Denver and then Dame gave him "the look" which read, "your time here is short friend.".
People want to make all kinds of assumptions about the FO and as far as I can tell only Olshey's idiocy is to blame. The only rumored trades that would have actually helped all involved CJ and were seemingly turned down by Olshey and/or Dame.
People want to take Dame at face value and get conspiratorial about Cronin intentionally driving out Dame when Dame does two VERY suspect things. One, he waited until the ink was dry with his boy Grant's overpay pay day, and two, he asked for a trade almost the minute he could after signing his Mega Giga extension and we all know Dame is about them Dolla's, he's never hid that. And of course one has to assume that Dame has signed off on Aaron Badloss's egregious behavior which is also telling IMO.
I mean is that squinting and blaming Dame? Sure it is, I admit it, I don't actually know about Dame's arm chair GM-ing despite some evidence of that being there, but people are using even
less evidence to assume
more about Cronin in particular.