Blazers 2023-2024 Thread

[DuckMastaFunk]

Drinking in those salty tears:

https://sports.yahoo.com/jimmy-butler-c ... 25469.html

People always accuse others of the stuff they did.

P.S. I will continue to believe that Toronto was the scare Lillard needed to accept a trade to Milwaukee.

I'm pretty sure this was a joke. Posting a video on social media saying, "you didn't hear it from me."???

[Phalanx]

Drinking in those salty tears:

https://sports.yahoo.com/jimmy-butler-c ... 25469.html

People always accuse others of the stuff they did.

P.S. I will continue to believe that Toronto was the scare Lillard needed to accept a trade to Milwaukee.

I'm pretty sure this was a joke. Posting a video on social media saying, "you didn't hear it from me."???

Yeah, you are right, I saw the video later and he wasn't serious. Still kinda salty though.

If there was tampering/ collusion (and that seems likely) I doubt Butler would be involved.

[pezsez1]

I think it's absolutely rich that anyone affiliated with Miami would accuse anyone else of tampering. This whole fiasco had Miami's overly entitled fingerprints all over it.

[Boom]

Pat Riley messed up.

Meh, unless someone is really high on Jovic, not sure what they could have offered.

I think Riley knew he had one chance at scaring Joe into a deal and if he didn't take it, it wasn't going to work. The Miami media will blame him, but he also could only do so much. I think this should be viewed as a win for Cronin less than a Riley loss.

From what I’ve read it sounded like they were playing hardball and only offered about half of their available assets. Who really knows though. They let some key players walk to create room for Lillard and now they have some massive holes to fill now.

[greenyellow]

I know this is mainly coming from Dame's side of things and a journalist who's close to him but it doesn't paint Cronin in a good light.

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[greenyellow]

Dame basically thanked everyone in the organization but Cronin and the current front office decision makers.

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[bellsduck]

Again, good riddance. He seems like he was more of a cancer than a lot of people thought.

[Tray Dub]

I'll always be a huge fan of his. Hope he gets a championship in Milwaukee.

[Phalanx]

It could have all been different with Lillard if he had been driven by a desire to win instead of a desire to squeeze out every dollar for himself that was possible. If he had just had the wisdom to realize that his crazy contracts were hurting the team's ability to put a team around him. But he wanted his cake and eat it too. He wanted all the money, but he also wanted to complain about the lack of talent around him. In the end, it was always about Lillard and never about the Blazers, and the team suffered one of the driest spells in terms of playoff success in franchise history as a result.

Cronin made a decision to save the team instead of inviting that cancer back in. People who are Lillard fans instead of Blazer fans will not understand why Cronin didn't re-open the door for that toxic relationship, but this outcome is better for the Blazers, and better for Lillard too. He goes to a new competitive team where it won't be all about him anymore and he will learn what his role should always have been, as a second fiddle to the main star. Unfortunately for Milwaukee, they will have to bear the brunt of that contract in a few years, so their window is going to be pretty short. It was a desperation move for them to try to keep Giannis in town a little longer. We'll see if it pays off for them.

Meanwhile, the Blazers will hopefully be able to move on from the wasted years and start with something like what they had before LMA left: A couple of young exciting guards and a dependable scoring big man to build around. This iteration of the rebuild may not work, but at least there is hope instead of just the Groundhog Day we have all been stuck in for the better part of the last decade.

[Phalanx]

I know this is mainly coming from Dame's side of things and a journalist who's close to him but it doesn't paint Cronin in a good light.

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This reads like retroactive spin to make it seem like Lillard and his agent were still calling the shots. What a joke. I bet what really happened is that Cronin started talking to Toronto as a scorched-earth option and suddenly Lillard found that he was open to other contenders after all. It's too bad we will probably never hear Cronin's side of this.

[squintsdd]

I know this is mainly coming from Dame's side of things and a journalist who's close to him but it doesn't paint Cronin in a good light.

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This reads like retroactive spin to make it seem like Lillard and his agent were still calling the shots. What a joke. I bet what really happened is that Cronin started talking to Toronto as a scorched-earth option and suddenly Lillard found that he was open to other contenders after all. It's too bad we will probably never hear Cronin's side of this.

The truth likely falls somewhere in the middle. Cronin probably wasn't forthcoming with his true intentions when that 3rd pick fell into his lap, and Lillard probably was trying make things as difficult as possible out of spite. It's a little disappointing though that Miami and Lillard's agent won't face any repercussions for tampering, and for trying to sabotage Lillard's trade value, but in the end everyone got a little bit of what they really wanted.

[woundedknees]

Compare the Drexler years to Lillard's tenure... methinks the Glide may have had a better understanding of the operative word "team" than Dame did.

[pezsez1]

I bet what really happened is that Cronin started talking to Toronto as a scorched-earth option and suddenly Lillard found that he was open to other contenders after all.

Agree 100%.

I'm honestly still amazed by how badly Miami, Dame, & Goodwin misread/mismanaged this entire situation. I'm most shocked by how Pat Riley imagined he had all kinds of leverage that never really existed. Clearly they all ****ed around and found out, and at the last second they came to Geez and the trade to Milwaukie was carved out.

Regarding that story, I don't think Dame is lying about anything, but it clearly lacks Cronin's side of things. Blazer fans (and basketball fans) should understand that however Dame felt about Cronin betraying him, Cronin almost certainly felt the exact same way when Dame requested his trade and then his agent tried to poison the well. I still don't know what to make of Cronin -- he pulled a W from the Dame trade, but I'm still not convinced he had any real "plan" up and through this recent draft -- but I don't think he's a liar. I think he honestly tried to build around Dame, but he didn't want to get fleeced, and other teams were trying to fleece him because they knew he was under pressure from Dame. And Dame reportedly was on board and had his back... until suddenly he didn't.

Breakups/divorces are rarely ever clean and that's all this is. Nobody here is the bad guy, just two people with big egos (required in their lines of work) who realized they'd grown apart & didn't want to admit fault.

The end result was the optimal ending, even if getting there was a bit messy.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, my only real beef with the story is about Chris Haynes. Apparently he said on a podcast that Dame was only interested in returning long enough for a Miami deal to be worked out (and I presume that would have extended to other contenders). The Athletic reported the same thing. That detail clearly seemed to be missing from the emotional climax of this story. So either there's a weird gray area there or Chris Haynes fudged the truth to spin a more visceral moment. As a former journalist, that definitely rubs me the wrong way. Again, would love to hear Cronin's side, but I know we never will.

[greenyellow]

The Haynes story doesn't really touch on the fact that Lillard was just trying to pull a KD move by rescinding his trade request until they could get him to Miami down the road. While the Nets put up with that until they made a deal with Phoenix, Cronin and Portland couldn't have that keep hanging over their head since Miami's deal was never going to get better and Dame sticking around was going to slow Shaedon, Ant, and Scoot's development. Dame's agent (who basically only has him, Thybulle, DeRozan, and a couple other players as agents) misplayed his hand and tried to screw Portland on the way out. I think most fans need to realize that no one in this situation is blameless for how this all went down.

[Duck07]

Knowing that story is jaded heavily in favor of Dame, all I can think of is what a rotten, spoiled attitude he has.

My tough times would be a dream to someone else - Geno Smith

I have zero sympathy for a player who has achieved massive individual success in the league, been consistently paid as one of the NBA's top players while always talking about how "real" and "loyal" he was to the City/org and then acts like he is entitled to play for whoever he wants. That this Haynes article even needed to be published shows that on his way out, Lillard wants to make sure he tars other people in the process and that's a callous indifference to actual people.

He's made 233 Million so far in 11 Seasons and is set to almost double that over the next 4 years and he wants to rag on Portland and Cronin for doing him wrong. Throwing a hissy fit on your way really takes the mask off.