there's not much else to root for this season. The development of Sharpe, Scoot, Camara, etc. is about it. People, including yourself, are busy talking about Portland trading Grant & Brogdon, mostly for draft assets as the main prizes. Those would certainly be tanking moves and I'm pretty sure if the trade deadline passes and both Grant and Brogdon are still Blazers, some people here will be irritated
and "8 years of losing"? That's all the way back to the beginning of the Dame/CJ team. The first 4 years of that experiment, Portland was 187-141. Winning record, although I'd certainly agree that those teams were pretenders, at best, and needed, desperately, a new vision and new direction. I said that over and over and the rebuttals were always those 'winning records'...and blahblah-straight years in the playoffs...and the WCF appearance.
the reality is that CJ/RoCo/Nance were traded less than two years ago when Cronin tried to retool instead of rebuild. And Dame/Nurkic were traded 6 months ago when the idea of a retool was shit-canned and a full rebuild begun. This rebuild is practically only in it's 1st year. The only true rebuilding pieces Portland has added from trading CJ/RoCo/Nance/Dame/Nurkic has been Camara and Murray. I consider Ayton a fence-straddling move; and a debatable one at that
so I don't see anything wrong with looking at lottery position when the team is at most, 18 months into a full rebuild and 6 months away from trading the franchise player. I'm not sure what the average length of a successful rebuild is but I'd estimate it's at least 5 seasons. And I think looking at the value of a subtle tank job is warranted when the team has the 5th worst record in the league and is only 1/2 game better than Memphis, with the 4th worst record...and Memphis will be getting Morant back next Tuesday
