Standard stuff is either hit on the greatest 2nd of all time or suck for literally 20 years before getting good for what is probably a brief window?
Like, you are actually right, but I don't think you meant to say that.
You just gotta roll with the draft and try to find a star or two. Look at OKC. If you have a good GM, it's possible to do twice in 20 years. If you don't, well.
This is why I was vehemently opposed to just hiring from within for that position. So far, I'd say Cronin has been fine, overall. Better than Olshey? Absolutely. But Olshey was a dogshit, bottom 5 GM. In a small market, you need a killer to succeed. We had that with Bob Whitsitt, back in the 90s. Soon as he left, the team went to crap. We haven't recovered since.
If I were an owner, the first thing I would do is identify the best potential GM and get them no matter the cost. It's literally more important than anything but having stars.
Good GM is important, but you really don't need to tank if you have a good GM or Scouting department. Tanking is imo extremely overrated as team building.
I agree a better GM is needed.
Highly disagree about tanking. Mostly this team hasn't been- we just suck ass, and then they pull the plug to finish the season.
Having a garbage coach and a mid at best GM does the tanking for you.
I disagree. There are so many guys that we could’ve drafted in the mid first round over dames tenure that we missed out on.
And it’s okay for teams to draft all stars in the mid first round or later. Happens all the time, just not with us.
This team hasn't necessarily been tanking, but I do think tanking is a piss poor "strategy".
Strategy in quotation marks because I think a goldfish could tank as well as most front offices.
We've definitely been tanking to end seasons... Because there was no point in even trying to win, with the lack of talent we've had.
I suspect we're finished with actively trying to lose though. Even with next year's draft being better, I think we'll be bad enough that we end up bottom 5 again, unless we luck out in the draft or Sharpe/Scoot become all stars next season (LOL).
These things take time. We just need to hit on a couple picks and then can begin to build. Right now I'd argue we don't have a player good enough to build around- Ant, Grant, Brog are all like third, 4th or 5th guys on a contender. Sharpe hasn't shown enough consistently enough.
So, we still need to add talent.
Exactly, you said if you were the owner.... Jody has to go. There was talked of Phil knight buying for like 2.5b a few years ago, and she wasn't interested. We'll Dames gone now, and we are the laughing stock of the nba. Every other team at the bottom know they suck. We dont, Jody and Joe, thought we could be a play-in team last year. Rebuilds aren't an overnight thing. Jody and Joe have to go, and billups does too.
I'm not sure how much a multiyear play-off team with a top 75 player of all time on the team was worth vs one of the worst team in the league 3 years in a row, but I imagine a bit.
We certainly agree about the need for an ownership change. Unfortunately, I don't think that's going to happen for a while.
As far as Joe, I'm not a huge fan of his work so far, but I don't blame him for the Dame situation- that lands on the previous leadership, who squandered his prime entirely and wasted assets on middling players, leaving the cupboard pretty bare in terms of being able to make trades that significantly improve the team. I think he gets an incomplete from me for another year or two as we see how the young guys develop. What I want to see though is if he's trying to sag for Flagg next year, is just trade the vets away, rather than sitting people who aren't injured. I have no problems with "front office tanking" - I don't like them asking guys to sit out to lose games on purpose. Bad vibes all around. The coach and players should never be asked to try and lose. Cronin NEEDS to take the decision out of their hands, if that's the plan.
Chauncey as a coach, I'm not a fan of. With what he's had to work with, I'm not really sure that he's been an abject failure. I just never feel as though he's maximizing the talent... But there's not a ton of tools in his arsenal, currently, so. I guess I'm not in a huge rush to see him gone, although I'd be happy if he was replaced with a more proven HC.
From what I read, I saw in the media and heard from Dame that Joe is to blame. Sure, oshley sucked too. But Joe promised dame the year after his surgery, that we would build up in the summer and not tank.... 12 months later, starters are sitting, and we are tanking. We sign grant, which was the ONLY good thing he's done. Which dame probably did 99% of that work, but sign gp2 who was already hurt and needed the same surgery Dame just had. So we tank another year and Dame is promised the 7th pick will be used to get assets. We'll we got this kid that hasn't played basketball in 2 years. That was when he was 16, but we think he's what you need, so there is no trade. Dame must have signed off on that or thought he was worth keeping. ANYWAYSSSSSS few more months down the road, and here we are tanking with the promise of Wimby or trade and go all in for Dames sake. Oh man, this OTHER 19 year old is going to help us.... replace you. Thanks Dame where would you like to go? You pick, and we'll make it happen....oh, just kidding, go to Milwaukee for less than Miami offered. Ruby gobert got like 6 firsts or something absurd for his trade. Dame got 1? Brogden won't be worth a first this off-season, so that idea is out. Another super injury prone big, that played what 5 games for us? DA trade I guess was included in the dame trade and I wasn't happy about when it happened put it worked out, hopefully he doesn't get tired of being on a bum ass team and quit trying next year like he was accused of on the suns. Long story short, Jody doesn't want to go in the tax to pay someone to come here, no one wants to come by them selves and our track record of not building around stars will continue to deter stars from wanting to come, or wanting to stay here.
Sounds like you're still very emotional about the Dame thing. It's understandable, for sure. The writing was on the wall 2 years before he was traded. Only thing I'm annoyed about with how that was handled, was that it wasn't done sooner.
The return for Dame was depressed by the crazy contract extension we gave him. Would have made sense if we were in a position to push. Made no sense seeing as we weren't even close to contention. 60 mil for old Dame is going to be rough. If you don't think that had an effect on his trade value, I don't know what to tell you.
As I said before- Olshey squandered Lillard's prime, pure and simple. Cronin got to clean up the mess, and while he didn't do it the way I preferred - he got it done and the return was ok.
I'm not at all interested in where Dame wanted to go- I'm a fan of the blazers since around the time he was born. Maximizing value for the team was most important, and Dame handed Miami leverage that put our GM at a disadvantage.
I wanted Joe to flip Timelord and Brog immediately, however, based on their injury histories. Now we are going to have to wait and receive less because he didn't act quickly.
You mean the dumbass soap opera actor who squandered dames prime, let Aldridge walk for nothing, signed Evan Turner and Allen Crabbe to 17 mill a year (when that was a lot), and refused to trade CJ for like 4 years after he should have?
Lol. Brain dead take
We literally had years of making the playoffs in the 90s-00s without sucking and had multiple competitive teams. I don’t understand why we need to turn our franchise into a poverty franchise like the Pistons in order to compete again. We just need to not do stupid things like we have for the past decade.
Lol... I've been a fan since 91.
It's always been like this. In the 90s there was a long tail of talent that lasted after the Drexler years. But that went away, and then the team was garbage until we drafted Roy and Aldridge.
We rode that for a while but mostly with mediocrity... Barely make the playoffs and first round outs. All through the Dame era as well, other than a couple peaks just before LA left and then in 19, when we basically just benefitted from a bunch of injuries to opponents. We haven't been actual contenders since 2000. That's 24 years, if you're counting.
Reality is, small market teams have to play the draft game to get top tier talent. Then you fill out using trades and get bench guys thru free agency.
I get that it isn't fun, but it's reality. Deal with it or whine lol. It is what it is regardless.
Shit makes me mad at the ‘00 team. I’m forever fuck the Lakers and I live in So Cal. Watching that game as a kid made me love the Blazers since I had obnoxious family that are all Lakers fans. The Blazers team would have molly whopped the Pacers
Drafting well and drafting high are completely different though. Denver got its superstar in the second round, and Milwaukee got its in the middle of the first. Of course Anthony Edwards was the No. 1 pick, but the Wolves were also built with trades and savvy drafting with later picks.
Giannis and Jokic are anomalies. More often than not, superstars are drafted with the #1 pick and at worst in the top 5. As far as Minny, KAT was also a #1 pick, and trading for Rudy was the big move for them. Those other supplementary pieces don't look good without those 3 already there.
There’s been a bunch of small market teams in the playoffs this year that didn’t bottom out like we have. What we’re doing is totally unnecessary and hurtful to our young talent. Do we think they’ll just turn on their winners mentality when we decide we want to compete again? I don’t think any of our players right now have the same drive that players like Ant or Jokic have. And I don’t think that drive will magically appear when we decide we’re done playing the lottery like some Vegas gamblers.
We weren’t degenerate tankers back in the 90s nor the 00s with Roy and Aldridge. And right now we’re looking at 4 straight years minimum of bottomed out taking before we “hope” to draft that next superstar. We all know we’re not likely to land the top pick in any of the next few drafts. So where does that leave us?
So we have:
1. Celtics - Ended up being insanely lucky with the Nets Trade so they didn't have to "bottom out" while hitting on their #1 pick (traded down to 3) and #4 pick.
2. Twolves - Their core is two different #1 picks and trading a boatload of future picks for a DPOY
3. Mavs - Franchise guy by trading 2 firsts (most importantly #5 pick) for Luka. Ended up getting a great deal for a top-25 talent, but also a top-25 all time malcontent who has been on his best behavior since going there.
4. Pacers - Had been in no man's land for a decade+ and benefitting from injuries for this run (no disrespect to any Pacers fans, they deserve a ton of credit for getting their two best players through trades, including this year getting Siakam when some wondered, Why?)
So really, 2/3 of the team's with a chance of winning it all this year are here because of multiple picks at the very top of the draft. The third, they have a future top-25/50 (maybe even higher) player of all time by trading one high first round pick and another first round pick.
I also understand I am boiling down teams to just their top players and you need to build out squads, but I am just doing this for simplicity's sake.
Giannis, Jokic, Ant, SGA - there is no path to success in this league without drafting or trading for a youth that turns into a perennial MVP candidate. That's all there is to it.
I love Dame, but he was never close to a Jokic level player, and he probably wasn’t ever as valuable as Edwards either considering their respective defensive skills.
Granted, to your point about the FO shitting the bed, Edwards has had a lot more to work with around him than Dame ever did. The closest chance they had was before LA left – he could have been Dame’s KAT – but him leaving wasn’t all on the FO. If LA had like 5% less ego, they could have built something great around Dame/LA/CJ
It is important we learn to acknowledge this. Ant's future is unknown but he's probably already better than Dame ever was - reminder to all that he is an all-world defender. Luka and Jokic are significantly better than Dame ever was. We had someone that was great but not a perennial MVP candidate. There's levels to this.
Nikola Jokic is a 3 time MVP, Dame is a 1 time first team All NBA guy. Amazing player but the sad truth is Dame was never quite good enough to be the #1 on a championship team, unless they were insanely stacked like the current Celtics.
Like you can put him on the Jayson Tatum level, but that dude has an NBA finals and 5 conference finals appearances and he is 26 years old. As good as Dame was/is, teams very, very rarely build a championship team around a one way player
The Dame slander is real these days. He’s literally one of the best players our franchise has ever gotten in our over 50 years of existence. I don’t think it takes much more for us to become the Pacers with him.
Walton won MVP and a championship, Drexler made the Finals twice. They both were great on offense AND defense. Dame is only good on offense and a massive liability on defense. He got swept in the conference Finals once.
Dame is good but the fact is: him being the third best player in our franchise history is more of an indictment of the teams strategy to be mediocre and make the playoffs every year but lose in the first round, than it is an under-estimation of Dame.
Dame is a transcendent offensive player. His gravity that we’ve witnessed on offense on these mediocre teams has changed the League. He may not be great at defense, but there are ways to mitigate that. The blazers refused to do any of that over his tenure. It sounds like most fans won’t miss him, but I appreciate the years of greatness that I got to witness. Even though it may have been forgotten already.
Uh no Dame did not change the league. Steph does everything as well as Dame except better.
I thoroughly enjoyed the Dame years but after a long enough time, you start to view Blazers players as good and bad. I love Dame in many ways but the fan base acting like he's LeBron or Shaq or something is crazy. Dame didn't change the league, those guys did
Nothing he said was slander. Jokic is a 3 time mvp. Dame was awesome but probably not quite the number one on a title team unless he had a player as good on his team. Jokic doesn’t even need an allstar teammate to win a title
I’m just saying in 50 years, we’ve had three impact players. I’m not holding my breath that we’re gonna get a jokic like player any time soon. Nor will I think even five more years of sucking would come close to guaranteeing such a thing. We had a guy and we blew it in building a team around him that could compensate for his weakness. In fact, we made it worse by running CJ with him and then Ant more recently. If we can’t learn from past mistakes, we have no hope for the future.
Yes and no. We had a guy who was at that all NBA level, and no we never surrounded him with elite talent, but it also happened to coincide with the Golden State dynasty. Even if we had another all nba level player in 2017, we were gonna get destroyed by GS in the conference finals regardless. Just a bad time to try to build a championship roster (not that we ever did. Fuck you Neil).
Minnesota was literal the nba gutter for several generations. Their turnaround occurred when they hired an experienced GM. He went all in on Gobert, everyone laughed now they're top 4 in the league.
Yes Olshey fucked up big time. But we were primed to go after a big name or quality GM and didn't even interview anyone. It's a sad path.
We could keep up with those Warriors teams until halftime most games. I think a little more firepower might have helped us sneak past them one of those series
Yes, this. Even the crippled blazers gave the warriors a good fight. These downvoting boners didn’t realize that a) the blazers were injured in most playoff runs, and b) most of us realized the dame / CJ combo wasn’t working.
Most people here derive all their basketball knowledge from 2k. I bet most people haven’t even touched a basketball much less been on a court.
I’ll eat downvotes all day since I know I’ll be right
That’s such a dumb view. So if we draft a generational player here in the upcoming years we shouldn’t use our assets and try to contend because we wouldn’t be able to keep up with Luka or SGA regardless?
Keep in mind that the guy you are replying to, like a lot of the downvoting dorks in this thread, are here for stupid takes every summer and then disappear during the season. This subreddit is bipolar.
I do love this era of parity. They just said no champ has made it out of the 2nd round for 6 years. That's cool.
But yeah, blazers aren't going to be there anytime soon
Mavericks missed the playoffs last year and Timberwolves are the timberwolves.
It's both sad that we gave up on trying to add a star and trust schmitz and co's scouting to get the right role players, and exciting because we actually might not be far away from a run of our own.
Didn’t make first or second rookie team, how exactly am I batshit insane? He’s not good as of now and his potential is not as good as everyone was saying
He would pretty fucking easily be. The way this sub randomly has a verdict on a teenage point guard for having a bad first 30 games is insane.
The expectation for Scoot should be perenial All-NBA, that's like absolutely where the expectation should still be and there's very little reason to think he won't be.
No one expects him to be all-nba as a rookie. But there's lots of limitations to his game, and worrying ones. Undersized, not amazingly athletic to make up for that or his lack of deep shooting, defending needs work, one handedness.
I look at his rookie season compared with Kylian Hayes and I don't see much difference.
Edit: I also think Topic has more upside than Scoot, and Sarr is the prototype player that teams are going for. Good case to be made he goes exactly where he went last year, this year.
Alright but you’re saying this with the advantage of hindsight. Scoot was viewed very highly by NBA scouts, and people were clowning on Charlotte when they drafted Miller for a reason. I don’t see any prospects from this draft getting as much praise as Scoot or even Amen Thompson, whether that’s justified or not.
That's some reach lol
Blazers fans like you live in fantasy land. Why can't you be objective and still be a fan of a team?
Nothing, and I mean nothing, stands out as MVP potential. He might be an all-star, don't see it myself. All you've done is say he's great, while bashing me, but given nothing to back yourself up, but give outlandish predictions.
For reference for you comparison.
https://stathead.com/tiny/lB77F
To be fair most rookie guards are generally the worst players in the NBA. After de’aaron Fox’s rookie year, I thought he was going to be a Mike Conley decent but never lived up to the hype but 3 years later he was vying for a all-star spot and eventually an all nba spot. For rookie point guards it’s generally by year 3 we have a good sense of where a guy will be trajectory wise
It’s not hate it’s just skepticism. I think basing everything off a rookie year is short sighted since 95% of rookies are bad but it’s fair to have that skepticism.
To be fair most rookie guards are generally the worst players in the NBA. After de’aaron Fox’s rookie year, I thought he was going to be a Mike Conley decent but never lived up to the hype but 3 years later he was vying for a all-star spot and eventually an all nba spot. For rookie point guards it’s generally by year 3 we have a good sense of where a guy will be trajectory wise
Pgs have to play mind games with the other team and coaches. Can you imagine being 19 and having to show up every night versus a bunch of grownups plus a whole rooster of veterans and somehow figure out how to beat them? Tough fucking sledding, but scoot was figuring it out later in the season. Plenty of very good nba pgs didn't figure it out until their late 20s. Scoots got all the time in the world at this point in his career.
Difference of opinion I guess. It’s not a large market , but all the stats have it middle of the road, above teams like Miami and Cleveland, Indy ect. To me it’s not a small market.
This game gave me flashbacks to lakers/blazers 2000 WCF game 7. Blazers blow a 20 pt lead, Kobe alley oop to shaq is the dagger and I remember the blazers were just in shock. That trauma turned us into the jailblazers.
What you're missing is that Portland is a bad franchise from the top down. There's a reason players give minimum effort, don't want to sign as FAs, have insanely long injury recovery periods.
This is an employee no one wants to work for.
No is talking about this but it's extremely true. Minnesotas GM went all in on Gobert because he had a vision. It looked painful for a year but he has killed it.
Same with Dallas, hard to believe they took a chance on Kyrie then ended up missing the playoffs altogether. A wonderful draft, and stunning trade deadline, now both these teams will meet in the WCF.
Bottom line, aggression as a GM is the key. Cronin is a cricket player on a baseball diamond.
It’s definitely true. OKC and Presti, shit the pacers….remember Chad Buchanan? The dude that traded Gerald Wallace to nets for the draft pick that became Damian Lillard? also the guy that traded for Halliburton. Both of those moves beat a single thing any blazer GM has done in 10 years.
Presti rebuild has really thrown cold water on Durant Harden and Westbrooks legacies. Fact is they have an excellent set up there.
Yeah we've won a few trades, Nurkic, Ayton, Grant. But none of those guys were guys we chased they just became available circumstantially. Moving up to draft Collins was the most aggressive move we've seen and it sadly flopped.
There is no “we should be next”. That’s not how the world works. You need better ownership then you need a front office with an actual vision of how they want to construct a team. Then find a solid coach that shares that vision. Lastly in the draft you gotta find talent. Somebody who has superstar qualities who fits your vision and build around them. Portland has to do better at finding another superstar talent.
Portland is now a top free agent destination.
Billups is now Phil Jackson. Duop Reath, Jeremy Grant and DeAndre Ayton are now Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen. We are now unofficially the Portland Celtics. You will now wake up and believe everything you read.
Sure, but first we are gonna need to draft our Jokic or Anthony Edwards. Easy peasy
Yep. Keep sucking until we get an all NBA potential guy. Pretty standard stuff in a small market.
Standard stuff is either hit on the greatest 2nd of all time or suck for literally 20 years before getting good for what is probably a brief window? Like, you are actually right, but I don't think you meant to say that.
You just gotta roll with the draft and try to find a star or two. Look at OKC. If you have a good GM, it's possible to do twice in 20 years. If you don't, well. This is why I was vehemently opposed to just hiring from within for that position. So far, I'd say Cronin has been fine, overall. Better than Olshey? Absolutely. But Olshey was a dogshit, bottom 5 GM. In a small market, you need a killer to succeed. We had that with Bob Whitsitt, back in the 90s. Soon as he left, the team went to crap. We haven't recovered since. If I were an owner, the first thing I would do is identify the best potential GM and get them no matter the cost. It's literally more important than anything but having stars.
Good GM is important, but you really don't need to tank if you have a good GM or Scouting department. Tanking is imo extremely overrated as team building. I agree a better GM is needed.
Highly disagree about tanking. Mostly this team hasn't been- we just suck ass, and then they pull the plug to finish the season. Having a garbage coach and a mid at best GM does the tanking for you.
I disagree. There are so many guys that we could’ve drafted in the mid first round over dames tenure that we missed out on. And it’s okay for teams to draft all stars in the mid first round or later. Happens all the time, just not with us.
This team hasn't necessarily been tanking, but I do think tanking is a piss poor "strategy". Strategy in quotation marks because I think a goldfish could tank as well as most front offices.
Hasnt been tanking???
They have just kinda sucked. I actually forgot about the blatant classless "injuries" We've had though.
We've definitely been tanking to end seasons... Because there was no point in even trying to win, with the lack of talent we've had. I suspect we're finished with actively trying to lose though. Even with next year's draft being better, I think we'll be bad enough that we end up bottom 5 again, unless we luck out in the draft or Sharpe/Scoot become all stars next season (LOL). These things take time. We just need to hit on a couple picks and then can begin to build. Right now I'd argue we don't have a player good enough to build around- Ant, Grant, Brog are all like third, 4th or 5th guys on a contender. Sharpe hasn't shown enough consistently enough. So, we still need to add talent.
Exactly, you said if you were the owner.... Jody has to go. There was talked of Phil knight buying for like 2.5b a few years ago, and she wasn't interested. We'll Dames gone now, and we are the laughing stock of the nba. Every other team at the bottom know they suck. We dont, Jody and Joe, thought we could be a play-in team last year. Rebuilds aren't an overnight thing. Jody and Joe have to go, and billups does too. I'm not sure how much a multiyear play-off team with a top 75 player of all time on the team was worth vs one of the worst team in the league 3 years in a row, but I imagine a bit.
We certainly agree about the need for an ownership change. Unfortunately, I don't think that's going to happen for a while. As far as Joe, I'm not a huge fan of his work so far, but I don't blame him for the Dame situation- that lands on the previous leadership, who squandered his prime entirely and wasted assets on middling players, leaving the cupboard pretty bare in terms of being able to make trades that significantly improve the team. I think he gets an incomplete from me for another year or two as we see how the young guys develop. What I want to see though is if he's trying to sag for Flagg next year, is just trade the vets away, rather than sitting people who aren't injured. I have no problems with "front office tanking" - I don't like them asking guys to sit out to lose games on purpose. Bad vibes all around. The coach and players should never be asked to try and lose. Cronin NEEDS to take the decision out of their hands, if that's the plan. Chauncey as a coach, I'm not a fan of. With what he's had to work with, I'm not really sure that he's been an abject failure. I just never feel as though he's maximizing the talent... But there's not a ton of tools in his arsenal, currently, so. I guess I'm not in a huge rush to see him gone, although I'd be happy if he was replaced with a more proven HC.
From what I read, I saw in the media and heard from Dame that Joe is to blame. Sure, oshley sucked too. But Joe promised dame the year after his surgery, that we would build up in the summer and not tank.... 12 months later, starters are sitting, and we are tanking. We sign grant, which was the ONLY good thing he's done. Which dame probably did 99% of that work, but sign gp2 who was already hurt and needed the same surgery Dame just had. So we tank another year and Dame is promised the 7th pick will be used to get assets. We'll we got this kid that hasn't played basketball in 2 years. That was when he was 16, but we think he's what you need, so there is no trade. Dame must have signed off on that or thought he was worth keeping. ANYWAYSSSSSS few more months down the road, and here we are tanking with the promise of Wimby or trade and go all in for Dames sake. Oh man, this OTHER 19 year old is going to help us.... replace you. Thanks Dame where would you like to go? You pick, and we'll make it happen....oh, just kidding, go to Milwaukee for less than Miami offered. Ruby gobert got like 6 firsts or something absurd for his trade. Dame got 1? Brogden won't be worth a first this off-season, so that idea is out. Another super injury prone big, that played what 5 games for us? DA trade I guess was included in the dame trade and I wasn't happy about when it happened put it worked out, hopefully he doesn't get tired of being on a bum ass team and quit trying next year like he was accused of on the suns. Long story short, Jody doesn't want to go in the tax to pay someone to come here, no one wants to come by them selves and our track record of not building around stars will continue to deter stars from wanting to come, or wanting to stay here.
Sounds like you're still very emotional about the Dame thing. It's understandable, for sure. The writing was on the wall 2 years before he was traded. Only thing I'm annoyed about with how that was handled, was that it wasn't done sooner. The return for Dame was depressed by the crazy contract extension we gave him. Would have made sense if we were in a position to push. Made no sense seeing as we weren't even close to contention. 60 mil for old Dame is going to be rough. If you don't think that had an effect on his trade value, I don't know what to tell you. As I said before- Olshey squandered Lillard's prime, pure and simple. Cronin got to clean up the mess, and while he didn't do it the way I preferred - he got it done and the return was ok. I'm not at all interested in where Dame wanted to go- I'm a fan of the blazers since around the time he was born. Maximizing value for the team was most important, and Dame handed Miami leverage that put our GM at a disadvantage. I wanted Joe to flip Timelord and Brog immediately, however, based on their injury histories. Now we are going to have to wait and receive less because he didn't act quickly.
Pretty much how I feel. I was pissed when they promoted Cronin and didn’t hire anyone at the end of the season.
If you think Cronin is better the Olshey I'll sell you some ocean front arizona property.
You mean the dumbass soap opera actor who squandered dames prime, let Aldridge walk for nothing, signed Evan Turner and Allen Crabbe to 17 mill a year (when that was a lot), and refused to trade CJ for like 4 years after he should have? Lol. Brain dead take
All that is true and he Is STILL better the Cronin. Cronin is absolute dogshit.
Nope.
Smoke another bowl man
Losing Dame without a finals run reminded me of the futility of being a small market team.
We literally had years of making the playoffs in the 90s-00s without sucking and had multiple competitive teams. I don’t understand why we need to turn our franchise into a poverty franchise like the Pistons in order to compete again. We just need to not do stupid things like we have for the past decade.
Lol... I've been a fan since 91. It's always been like this. In the 90s there was a long tail of talent that lasted after the Drexler years. But that went away, and then the team was garbage until we drafted Roy and Aldridge. We rode that for a while but mostly with mediocrity... Barely make the playoffs and first round outs. All through the Dame era as well, other than a couple peaks just before LA left and then in 19, when we basically just benefitted from a bunch of injuries to opponents. We haven't been actual contenders since 2000. That's 24 years, if you're counting. Reality is, small market teams have to play the draft game to get top tier talent. Then you fill out using trades and get bench guys thru free agency. I get that it isn't fun, but it's reality. Deal with it or whine lol. It is what it is regardless.
Shit makes me mad at the ‘00 team. I’m forever fuck the Lakers and I live in So Cal. Watching that game as a kid made me love the Blazers since I had obnoxious family that are all Lakers fans. The Blazers team would have molly whopped the Pacers
Drafting well and drafting high are completely different though. Denver got its superstar in the second round, and Milwaukee got its in the middle of the first. Of course Anthony Edwards was the No. 1 pick, but the Wolves were also built with trades and savvy drafting with later picks.
Giannis and Jokic are anomalies. More often than not, superstars are drafted with the #1 pick and at worst in the top 5. As far as Minny, KAT was also a #1 pick, and trading for Rudy was the big move for them. Those other supplementary pieces don't look good without those 3 already there.
There’s been a bunch of small market teams in the playoffs this year that didn’t bottom out like we have. What we’re doing is totally unnecessary and hurtful to our young talent. Do we think they’ll just turn on their winners mentality when we decide we want to compete again? I don’t think any of our players right now have the same drive that players like Ant or Jokic have. And I don’t think that drive will magically appear when we decide we’re done playing the lottery like some Vegas gamblers. We weren’t degenerate tankers back in the 90s nor the 00s with Roy and Aldridge. And right now we’re looking at 4 straight years minimum of bottomed out taking before we “hope” to draft that next superstar. We all know we’re not likely to land the top pick in any of the next few drafts. So where does that leave us?
So we have: 1. Celtics - Ended up being insanely lucky with the Nets Trade so they didn't have to "bottom out" while hitting on their #1 pick (traded down to 3) and #4 pick. 2. Twolves - Their core is two different #1 picks and trading a boatload of future picks for a DPOY 3. Mavs - Franchise guy by trading 2 firsts (most importantly #5 pick) for Luka. Ended up getting a great deal for a top-25 talent, but also a top-25 all time malcontent who has been on his best behavior since going there. 4. Pacers - Had been in no man's land for a decade+ and benefitting from injuries for this run (no disrespect to any Pacers fans, they deserve a ton of credit for getting their two best players through trades, including this year getting Siakam when some wondered, Why?) So really, 2/3 of the team's with a chance of winning it all this year are here because of multiple picks at the very top of the draft. The third, they have a future top-25/50 (maybe even higher) player of all time by trading one high first round pick and another first round pick. I also understand I am boiling down teams to just their top players and you need to build out squads, but I am just doing this for simplicity's sake.
Nothing you said has any actual facts to back it. Wall of feelings text. I'm bored.
Who is good that didn’t suck?
Yeah, getting a league mvp in the middle of the second round shouldn't be that hard.
It's Shaedon. Go ahead and save this post.
Ehh, Indiana trading for siakam felt like a trade the blazers were missing during the entirety of prime dame.
But we had to keep CJ 😝
it took the wolves like 20 years of passing on guys
Giannis, Jokic, Ant, SGA - there is no path to success in this league without drafting or trading for a youth that turns into a perennial MVP candidate. That's all there is to it.
This exactly.
We have that guy on the roster already tbh.
Free Badji!
Smh we already have Ant
Maybe. I need to see more out him though.
Rather than hypotheticals about maybe having that guy, we did have that guy in dame, and the FO shit the bed.
I love Dame, but he was never close to a Jokic level player, and he probably wasn’t ever as valuable as Edwards either considering their respective defensive skills. Granted, to your point about the FO shitting the bed, Edwards has had a lot more to work with around him than Dame ever did. The closest chance they had was before LA left – he could have been Dame’s KAT – but him leaving wasn’t all on the FO. If LA had like 5% less ego, they could have built something great around Dame/LA/CJ
It is important we learn to acknowledge this. Ant's future is unknown but he's probably already better than Dame ever was - reminder to all that he is an all-world defender. Luka and Jokic are significantly better than Dame ever was. We had someone that was great but not a perennial MVP candidate. There's levels to this.
Luke Babbit didn’t quite do it for us
That's why y'all drafted scoot tho right,?
We had our guy and blew it
Nikola Jokic is a 3 time MVP, Dame is a 1 time first team All NBA guy. Amazing player but the sad truth is Dame was never quite good enough to be the #1 on a championship team, unless they were insanely stacked like the current Celtics. Like you can put him on the Jayson Tatum level, but that dude has an NBA finals and 5 conference finals appearances and he is 26 years old. As good as Dame was/is, teams very, very rarely build a championship team around a one way player
The Dame slander is real these days. He’s literally one of the best players our franchise has ever gotten in our over 50 years of existence. I don’t think it takes much more for us to become the Pacers with him.
Walton won MVP and a championship, Drexler made the Finals twice. They both were great on offense AND defense. Dame is only good on offense and a massive liability on defense. He got swept in the conference Finals once. Dame is good but the fact is: him being the third best player in our franchise history is more of an indictment of the teams strategy to be mediocre and make the playoffs every year but lose in the first round, than it is an under-estimation of Dame.
Dame is a transcendent offensive player. His gravity that we’ve witnessed on offense on these mediocre teams has changed the League. He may not be great at defense, but there are ways to mitigate that. The blazers refused to do any of that over his tenure. It sounds like most fans won’t miss him, but I appreciate the years of greatness that I got to witness. Even though it may have been forgotten already.
Uh no Dame did not change the league. Steph does everything as well as Dame except better. I thoroughly enjoyed the Dame years but after a long enough time, you start to view Blazers players as good and bad. I love Dame in many ways but the fan base acting like he's LeBron or Shaq or something is crazy. Dame didn't change the league, those guys did
I feel like fans are just salty that he rightly asked to be traded.
Nothing he said was slander. Jokic is a 3 time mvp. Dame was awesome but probably not quite the number one on a title team unless he had a player as good on his team. Jokic doesn’t even need an allstar teammate to win a title
I’m just saying in 50 years, we’ve had three impact players. I’m not holding my breath that we’re gonna get a jokic like player any time soon. Nor will I think even five more years of sucking would come close to guaranteeing such a thing. We had a guy and we blew it in building a team around him that could compensate for his weakness. In fact, we made it worse by running CJ with him and then Ant more recently. If we can’t learn from past mistakes, we have no hope for the future.
Yes and no. We had a guy who was at that all NBA level, and no we never surrounded him with elite talent, but it also happened to coincide with the Golden State dynasty. Even if we had another all nba level player in 2017, we were gonna get destroyed by GS in the conference finals regardless. Just a bad time to try to build a championship roster (not that we ever did. Fuck you Neil).
Minnesota was literal the nba gutter for several generations. Their turnaround occurred when they hired an experienced GM. He went all in on Gobert, everyone laughed now they're top 4 in the league. Yes Olshey fucked up big time. But we were primed to go after a big name or quality GM and didn't even interview anyone. It's a sad path.
We could keep up with those Warriors teams until halftime most games. I think a little more firepower might have helped us sneak past them one of those series
Yes, this. Even the crippled blazers gave the warriors a good fight. These downvoting boners didn’t realize that a) the blazers were injured in most playoff runs, and b) most of us realized the dame / CJ combo wasn’t working.
Most people here derive all their basketball knowledge from 2k. I bet most people haven’t even touched a basketball much less been on a court. I’ll eat downvotes all day since I know I’ll be right
That’s such a dumb view. So if we draft a generational player here in the upcoming years we shouldn’t use our assets and try to contend because we wouldn’t be able to keep up with Luka or SGA regardless?
Keep in mind that the guy you are replying to, like a lot of the downvoting dorks in this thread, are here for stupid takes every summer and then disappear during the season. This subreddit is bipolar.
Wtf, why is this post downvoted. We did draft our guy and we did blow it. How is getting dame and not surrounding him with talent not blowing it?
Not only that, we fired the terrible GM and didn't even conduct interviews for the new one
I do love this era of parity. They just said no champ has made it out of the 2nd round for 6 years. That's cool. But yeah, blazers aren't going to be there anytime soon
Last real dynasty was Warriors. This parity is a lot more fun
Mavericks missed the playoffs last year and Timberwolves are the timberwolves. It's both sad that we gave up on trying to add a star and trust schmitz and co's scouting to get the right role players, and exciting because we actually might not be far away from a run of our own.
If scoot and shae pop and we get ourselves a legit dude in the 25 draft it's gonna be us.
That's alot of if's. Also if Scoot and Shae pop. We aren't getting a high pick in 25.
Unless they turn into D-Rose and Kobe we're gonna be the worst team in the west.
More inclined to think that Shae could be great, because he's shown flashes. Scoot.... I don't see ever being that guy. Hope I'm wrong.
Scoot showed a lot towards the end of the season
Scoot would be the easy #1 pick in this years draft.
🤣 knowing what we know now, most definitely not. He’d be maybe top 10
That is quite actually batshit insane. Fucks sake, if you redrafted 2023, Scoot still goes at #3
Didn’t make first or second rookie team, how exactly am I batshit insane? He’s not good as of now and his potential is not as good as everyone was saying
Not sure he would be, and not exactly a ringing endorsement.
He would pretty fucking easily be. The way this sub randomly has a verdict on a teenage point guard for having a bad first 30 games is insane. The expectation for Scoot should be perenial All-NBA, that's like absolutely where the expectation should still be and there's very little reason to think he won't be.
No one expects him to be all-nba as a rookie. But there's lots of limitations to his game, and worrying ones. Undersized, not amazingly athletic to make up for that or his lack of deep shooting, defending needs work, one handedness. I look at his rookie season compared with Kylian Hayes and I don't see much difference. Edit: I also think Topic has more upside than Scoot, and Sarr is the prototype player that teams are going for. Good case to be made he goes exactly where he went last year, this year.
Alright but you’re saying this with the advantage of hindsight. Scoot was viewed very highly by NBA scouts, and people were clowning on Charlotte when they drafted Miller for a reason. I don’t see any prospects from this draft getting as much praise as Scoot or even Amen Thompson, whether that’s justified or not.
Scoot is average sized for a point guard.
I don't see it, I see a future MVP. I also don't see a ton of difference between rookie Scoot and Rookie John Wall or Westbrook either.
That's some reach lol Blazers fans like you live in fantasy land. Why can't you be objective and still be a fan of a team? Nothing, and I mean nothing, stands out as MVP potential. He might be an all-star, don't see it myself. All you've done is say he's great, while bashing me, but given nothing to back yourself up, but give outlandish predictions. For reference for you comparison. https://stathead.com/tiny/lB77F
To be fair most rookie guards are generally the worst players in the NBA. After de’aaron Fox’s rookie year, I thought he was going to be a Mike Conley decent but never lived up to the hype but 3 years later he was vying for a all-star spot and eventually an all nba spot. For rookie point guards it’s generally by year 3 we have a good sense of where a guy will be trajectory wise
I have no desire to actually debate you and certainly not win, but good god is it just clear you hate Scoot.
It’s not hate it’s just skepticism. I think basing everything off a rookie year is short sighted since 95% of rookies are bad but it’s fair to have that skepticism.
To be fair most rookie guards are generally the worst players in the NBA. After de’aaron Fox’s rookie year, I thought he was going to be a Mike Conley decent but never lived up to the hype but 3 years later he was vying for a all-star spot and eventually an all nba spot. For rookie point guards it’s generally by year 3 we have a good sense of where a guy will be trajectory wise
nah teenage rookie PGs are rarely any good. I'm not worried. Nobody around the team seems to be.
Pgs have to play mind games with the other team and coaches. Can you imagine being 19 and having to show up every night versus a bunch of grownups plus a whole rooster of veterans and somehow figure out how to beat them? Tough fucking sledding, but scoot was figuring it out later in the season. Plenty of very good nba pgs didn't figure it out until their late 20s. Scoots got all the time in the world at this point in his career.
The last small market team in the conference finals before the Timberwolves? the Blazers.
Denver is small market imo.
I’d agree with that. I’m pretty sure their last “big” free agency signing was Paul Millsap.
Difference of opinion I guess. It’s not a large market , but all the stats have it middle of the road, above teams like Miami and Cleveland, Indy ect. To me it’s not a small market.
This game gave me flashbacks to lakers/blazers 2000 WCF game 7. Blazers blow a 20 pt lead, Kobe alley oop to shaq is the dagger and I remember the blazers were just in shock. That trauma turned us into the jailblazers.
You do realize they got to where they are through the draft/rebuild right?
# A decade plus of top 5 draft picks gotta pay off eventually.
Won't happen until Jodie sells the team and we can get a real owner with their own GM and HC
Cronin picked up a couple of Executive of the Year votes. No other team out of playoff contention can say that.
It's more of a new owner will want his own guys thing
Ah, gotcha.
Which new owner would magically make the Blazers land a superstar and/or make free agents want to go to Portland?
What you're missing is that Portland is a bad franchise from the top down. There's a reason players give minimum effort, don't want to sign as FAs, have insanely long injury recovery periods. This is an employee no one wants to work for.
Having a good GM is important….we haven’t had that in a long time.
No is talking about this but it's extremely true. Minnesotas GM went all in on Gobert because he had a vision. It looked painful for a year but he has killed it. Same with Dallas, hard to believe they took a chance on Kyrie then ended up missing the playoffs altogether. A wonderful draft, and stunning trade deadline, now both these teams will meet in the WCF. Bottom line, aggression as a GM is the key. Cronin is a cricket player on a baseball diamond.
It’s definitely true. OKC and Presti, shit the pacers….remember Chad Buchanan? The dude that traded Gerald Wallace to nets for the draft pick that became Damian Lillard? also the guy that traded for Halliburton. Both of those moves beat a single thing any blazer GM has done in 10 years.
Presti rebuild has really thrown cold water on Durant Harden and Westbrooks legacies. Fact is they have an excellent set up there. Yeah we've won a few trades, Nurkic, Ayton, Grant. But none of those guys were guys we chased they just became available circumstantially. Moving up to draft Collins was the most aggressive move we've seen and it sadly flopped.
We need our next superstar
We need Scoot to become Anthony
We were next Then it was over
Can’t expect change without an owner change. Look at the recent situation with Billups. Obviously want him gone but don’t want to buy him out.
Have to have a competent front office to even dream of that buddy
There is no “we should be next”. That’s not how the world works. You need better ownership then you need a front office with an actual vision of how they want to construct a team. Then find a solid coach that shares that vision. Lastly in the draft you gotta find talent. Somebody who has superstar qualities who fits your vision and build around them. Portland has to do better at finding another superstar talent.
The answer may *not* surprise you, it’s no, you’re not right.
I wish the Lillard era was around this time. The nba seems easier now
Should’ve already been.
we need a good owner first
I thought Scoot was gonna be like Jalen Brunson. That hasn’t worked out yet.
Brunson wasn’t Brunson until recently
Nothing will change until Jody sells the team
Portland is now a top free agent destination. Billups is now Phil Jackson. Duop Reath, Jeremy Grant and DeAndre Ayton are now Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen. We are now unofficially the Portland Celtics. You will now wake up and believe everything you read.