This Forum is a Ghost Town: Who Killed It?

[Shem]

Olshey was on the job for like 5 minutes when Dame was picked. That was a scouting staff pick. If you're giving him credit for that, you also have to admit he then immediately blew the second lottery pick in that draft on Meyers Leonard.

That's what we call a strawman. I NEVER gave Olshey credit for the Dame pick in my last reply. All I said is

"people were calling for Olshey's head for drafting Dame"

Where did that include me?

This was the thread I was talking about.

viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1190709

I never hated the Dame pick. I just thought we could, per rumors, moved up giving some value I don't recall what - so you can see how inconsequential it would have been, to Toronto at 8 to draft him. It was leaked at the time that Terrence Ross was Toronto's pick. And he wasn't a top 8 player in draft projections.

BTW, You did hate the Dame pick. And I'm going to open this can of worm only on you since you decided to strawman me.

Damian Lillard, Meyers Leonard - both positions of need and not necessarily the best players available. that said, I wouldn't be surprised if the blazers are legitimately interested in lillard given their longstanding tradition of blowing a draft pick on a point guard.

LINK:
viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1186457

waiters at 4? if we **** this up and pick lillard...

LINK:
viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1190411

specifically passing on barnes at #6 and then, based on OP's premise, losing batum. but we'll see.

BTW, you wanted Barnes, not Drummond.

LINK:
viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1195054

not to be negative, I'm sure lillard will be a solid pick, but until he goes up against nba competition, how exactly has the bayless 2.0 fears faded away?

LINK:
viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1190800

I don't even get what you're trying to prove.

Yes you do.

If it's that I post stupid crap, yeah. I've been doing that for like 15 years.
Drummond was my pick.

Not according to your posts back then. Barnes and Drummond were both on the board when Dame was picked.

You can find the post or posts I made after the combine, where his numbers mirrored Dwight Howard. But I thought there was a 0% chance that he would slide to #6.

Again, I posted you upset about Dame being picked. Why so upset about it. About 80-85% of this forum agreed with you. I was pretty much alone defending the Dame pick just like with Chauncey.

I didn't hate picking Dame, I hated the Dame pick. Big difference.

Here it is again comparing him to Bayless like many of you did.

not to be negative, I'm sure lillard will be a solid pick, but until he goes up against nba competition, how exactly has the bayless 2.0 fears faded away?

The Blazers had two lotto picks and we used the best pick we had since Aldridge on some 3 or 4 year guy out of Weber State. What conference are they even in? I never saw the guy play.

Never stopped you from passing judgement which should be lesson learned. I had my eye on Dame while we had Fat Felton at the PG. I never imagined that somehow the Blazers would end up with him. I considered it a pipe dream until it happened.

If the Blazers were going to draft a back up point guard, you don't use the #6 pick to do it. Especially when you have #11 pick and options to move up if you absolutely want some usage heavy point guard.
This is code, yes I hated the pick and I'm justifying it while trying to sell I didn't really hate the pick.

The draft is a crap shoot. Wizenheimer wanted Thomas Robinson. He was smart enough to preface that with "I do not follow college basketball. I want power forward depth. So, I guess that guy".

We're not talking about Wiz here. I only did this to you because of your strawman argument that you only made because you're still bitter about our debate about Billups recently.

I ate crow on it.

Doesn't change the fact that you downplayed the situation.

If you're fine holding quotes from 12 years ago about a draft, not knowing who picks ahead of us, who should the Blazers draft this year? Maybe I can give you some flak in 2036.

You don't get it do you. I briefly brought up the situation because one of the topics was the lack of Olshey hate back then and I explained how that wasn't true. You decided to strawman me while making up what you said back then. I would have let go and not dug up those quotes if hadn't strawmanned me. I wouldn't have cared, but the you had to do it so I decided to throw that in your face since the topic was brought up. Hopefully lesson learned when you BS someone like me while insulting them at the same time.

That's one area I didn't forget. All the **** I was given about wanting Dame and it turns out I was one of the rare ones to know what this guy was going to become. Just like I knew another small school point guard was going to be great named Stephen Curry. Had we had a chance at him back in 2009, I would have been advocating for him. But we ended up with the 22nd pick and I knew there was no way he was going to drop that far. It was different with Dame because I knew we had a shot. My only concerned was Sacramento picking him at 5.

[JasonStern]

Just like I knew another small school point guard was going to be great named Stephen Curry. Had we had a chance at him back in 2009, I would have been advocating for him.

Okay. Who is the best player available in the 4-6 range in this draft? I haven't heard much advocating for anyone. Just a bunch of hindsight talking.

[DeBlazerRiddem]

I think this was pretty much to be expected once we traded Dame, of course there are going to be some lean years. Its an unfortunate nature of the game. I doubt there was any real reload strategy that would have been anything besides another treadmill so it was inevitable that we would end up in the NBA basement and that fans would stop following the team as closely. Lots of good posts in this thread explaining how there just isn't much worth following at the moment for a variety of reasons.

I will say I am at a low point with our ownership and the NBA in general. I am pretty cynical toward our owner not having a strong desire to win but to treat the team like a cash cow that Jody, Burt and other hangers-on would otherwise never get. As soon as she sells all those lucrative Vulcan jobs go away for all these people who maintained Paul's sports teams so I am not holding my breath that we get any new blood at the top anytime soon. Maybe the leagues move toward gambling and being entertainment first instead of sport is all in my head (or nothing new) but combined with 3 point fests and no defense it feels like a worse, more predictable product over all.

To be honest though, neither of those issues would really stop me from watching the Blazers. Right now my biggest problem with that is Root sports and not being willing to jump through the hoops to get an international VPN or deal with shady streaming sites. I've been catching some stuff here and there but its definitely the fewest games I have watched in at least a decade. Hell no am I paying 80 bucks a month or whatever it is these days to watch this garbage-ass team.

Simons, Grant and Ayton are the type of NBA players that make you tear out your hair. They are soooo naturally talented but just lack the fire to put the team on their back and make something of it. All of them are just out there waiting for that guy to show up and lead them but sucks because we traded that guy this summer and neither of our recent draft picks look like they can fill those shoes either. The 2024 draft looks pretty lean so we gotta cross our fingers that Mike knows his stuff and doesn't just pick whomever got the most hype like we did last summer. We haven't done terrible at getting some solid underrated young players so its not all doom and gloom but no amount of Camara's or Reath's are going to make up for a lack of top end talent.

I think Billups is long past due, coaches are easy come, easy go especially while rebuilding. Unless he is doing some amazing work behind the scenes I don't see any reason to not keep looking. I'm not sold on Cronin either, internal hires often seem like company men rather than bold risk takers, not saying he cant be good and it takes some time to see what a GM can really do but it is going to take doing something special and outside the box to turn this team into something good. It is low-key hilarious to me how much the team is paying for this roster. It has to be rock bottom in terms of dollar spent per win. I kind of wonder if the compensation the top brass can reasonably be paid is tied at all to roster cost. Probably not but hey at least they don't seem to be scrimping and saving when playing with house money so we got that going for us.

[m0ng0]

Well hell we got plenty of closet coach know it alls around here maybe we could have a vote?