Ducks Attack Message Board Forum

oregontrack wrote:i was actually thinking the opposite, dame and 3J were the only blazers to show up and we had a tie game in the 4th quarter. give me a game in portland w/ nurkic and pray that somebody else actually hits a shot, and who knows.

game one was a great example as to why we need to focus on a legitimate 4 in the draft.

Seriously. Mo, Aminu, and Vonleh were bad. ET was solid, I thought.

Phenom wrote:

oregontrack wrote:i was actually thinking the opposite, dame and 3J were the only blazers to show up and we had a tie game in the 4th quarter. give me a game in portland w/ nurkic and pray that somebody else actually hits a shot, and who knows.

game one was a great example as to why we need to focus on a legitimate 4 in the draft.

Seriously. Mo, Aminu, and Vonleh were bad. ET was solid, I thought.

It was similar to last years 2nd rd. match-up, where the Blazers were competitive until the 4th quarter. The backcourt scoring was impressive, but obviously can't be counted on to do that. If Nurkic is healthy, by all means get him on the court Wednesday, if not maybe he can be a huge plus at home for game 3. With or without Nurkic, Crabbe needs to step up and supply double digit points.

Merganzer wrote:

Phenom wrote:

oregontrack wrote:i was actually thinking the opposite, dame and 3J were the only blazers to show up and we had a tie game in the 4th quarter. give me a game in portland w/ nurkic and pray that somebody else actually hits a shot, and who knows.

game one was a great example as to why we need to focus on a legitimate 4 in the draft.

Seriously. Mo, Aminu, and Vonleh were bad. ET was solid, I thought.

It was similar to last years 2nd rd. match-up, where the Blazers were competitive until the 4th quarter. The backcourt scoring was impressive, but obviously can't be counted on to do that. If Nurkic is healthy, by all means get him on the court Wednesday, if not maybe he can be a huge plus at home for game 3. With or without Nurkic, Crabbe needs to step up and supply double digit points.

Forgot Crabbe, he was bad too. Missing open shots and playing bad defense.

karlhungis wrote:

oregontrack wrote:i was actually thinking the opposite, dame and 3J were the only blazers to show up and we had a tie game in the 4th quarter. give me a game in portland w/ nurkic and pray that somebody else actually hits a shot, and who knows.

game one was a great example as to why we need to focus on a legitimate 4 in the draft.

How many legitimate 4's are in the draft?

many. deepest draft for PF's in recent memory. so deep the many of the gurus on RealGM are arguing to go BPA with our first pick and take a 4 with our second of three first rounders.

AC is playing on a sprained foot. So I kinda expected him to sh*t the bed

Blazers have picks, 15, 20 & 26 in the first round.

Merganzer wrote:Blazers have picks, 15, 20 & 26 in the first round.

People are bummed about the Cleveland pick ending up at 26, but the way the Blazers got all the way down to 15 and still made the playoffs was pretty good. Losing that last game probably moved them up in the order 3 positions.

It's going to be really interesting to see what Olshey does with these picks. He has a serious salary cap problem already. Building through the draft is a good strategy, but kind of difficult to implement when your roster is already full of contracts. Kind of funny to think that the same guy who got the Blazers into this mess might be the best one to get them out of it. We'll see.

unless they package the 26 with one of the other picks to move up i have to image we draft and stash a euro for the very reason you just gave.

sadly there isn't much coming off the books this year. they can renounce ezili, which will save about $8 mil. ed davis will be on the last year of his expiring, they might be able to package him with something to a willing taker. but that's about it.

i know you've been critical of the crabbe deal, and i hated the evan turner deal, but man that meyers leonard contract may be worse. i know it's for less money, but at least crabbe and turner do stuff. leonard is useless on the court and eating up $10/$11 mil a year.

I've always said that the Leonard deal was the worst. Like you've said, Crabbe and ET at least contribute. A summer to forget for Portland, for sure.

Ranking how horrible each deal was would be an interesting exercise. On one hand, Leonard absolutely sucks and as I said last year, they should have let him test the market and now he would be making a lot less. On the other hand, both Turner and Crabbe could easily have Leonard's entire salary cut from each of theirs and we could probably still find better values around the league than either of them. Meanwhile, Lillard and McCollum are decent players, but neither of them are punching their salary cap weight on a day-to-day basis either. Both of those were also bad deals for the blazers. The only way Lillard makes sense is if you think he is good enough to draw others to the team. His own play doesn't merit that much salary.

Davis and Harkless are a little better in the value department, and Aminu isn't going to break the team. Turner, Crabbe, Leonard, and probably McCollum are the deals that have put a cannonball through the Blazers' hull.

As an aside: it really seemed like Napier did well the few times he was in. I wonder if his role could somehow be expanded. I'm not sure why they sat him in the second half of that last game, but it seemed like he was playing too well and they wanted to lose the game.

problem being, of course, is that portland could not have offered lillard or mccollum less and kept them.

I don't have a problem with their contracts, TBH. Everyone is overpaid these days.

Nurkic and Durant out?

nurkic for sure, durant i haven't seen anything official. love me some blazers but i don't think KD is relevent in this series.

oregontrack wrote:problem being, of course, is that portland could not have offered lillard or mccollum less and kept them.

Whether that is true or not (I tend to think not) is really immaterial. Lillard and McCollum are not good enough players to lead a team to a championship, or even into contention. Therefore, they are not worth max deals. Solidifying a team's position as a perma-eight seed is not what I call good GM work. The team went 41-41, 26 games behind the league leader, and even that was only possible because of some late-season heroics from Nurkic. To have the second-highest payroll in the league and still be so far out of contention means there is a lot of overpaying going on. People can say they are fine with that. Personally, I like my team to win.