Of course not, but you could make the argument that they may have been able to build the contender that they never could if they went that route. Also, Aldridge, Matthews and Batum were all here already and an established part of a core. We were adding a 22-year old Damian Lillard to that. Scoot is 19. We have more time with Scoot.
Where did that get Dame? He spent 11 years in Portland and never contended, mostly due to Neil Olshey's incompetence but also a lack of assets to be able to surround Dame with meaningful pieces. If you think a core of Scoot, Sharpe, OG, Grant and Ayton contends in a couple years, I get it. But to me, that feels more likely to be a team that's good enough to win a playoff series but not good enough to win it all. I'd rather take more time to make sure we build a team or have the assets that result in a contender.
Dame's teams made the playoffs in eight of his first nine years. That established core you point to when Dame got here won 28 games the season before he arrived and was in the lottery, won 33 games in Dame's first year and then was in the conference semifinals.
Of course, Dame also had a team in the conference finals that squandered leads in what, three of the four games against a dynastic team? I get the need to revise history to suit your narrative, but your post comes off like Dame was on a perpetual loser. He was not. He was on a good team that never was able to catch up to better teams, and one could argue the Blazers squandered good resources on meh returns in a panic to fit Dame's window, which, BTW, doesn't seem to be closing as fast as people that applauded the moves to get RoCo and Nance.
One other thing about contenders. Exactly how many teams are really contenders out there every year?
In Dame's career, eight different teams have won NBA titles. Twelve different teams have played in the finals. Three of those eight winners have been LeBron teams. One of the others -- which won four times -- was Steph/Klay/Draymond/Kerr with Durant a couple of years.
One team built around one of the five best players in the history of the game. The other a dynasty built around guys that were picked seventh, 11th and 35th.
Two of those other champion teams were built around homegrown talent that was drafted 15th and 41st who are two of the five best players in the NBA.
If your standard for contention is being able to get to the finals, the Blazers are far from alone in not contending -- the number of teams that are truly contenders are minuscule. If your standard for contention is being able to win playoff series, the Blazers in Dame's career are -- they made the playoffs eight straight years before he basically missed a season with core injury surgery.
I get so tired of these double standards and disingenuous arguments to act like Dame was in such a bad situation in Portland that he might as well have been the little kid begging for the dish of gruel.
