SHAMS: Splitter named interim HC

[zzaj]

With Billups likely out what did we NOT do this offseason that was generally wanted by the fanbase -

Simons gone.
Ayton gone.
Billups gone.
Grant to the bench.
Big swing in the draft.
Camara locked up to a lower AV contract than generally expected.
Sharpe locked up to a lower AV contract than generally expected.
New ownership that by all indications is not intent on moving the team + owner that seems invested in winning per his Hockey team history.

This offseason has checked all the boxes that the general consensus here were hoping for with a Dame reunion the icing on the cake.

What else could reasonably be asked for? How can this not be seen as one of the best off seasons in the past decade plus?

Yeah, in terms of positive offseasons...I can't really think of a better one going back a loooooong way. It rivals the 2006 Roy/Aldridge draft for me, in terms of the positivity I've felt.

I do wonder if Grant is going to stay on the Bench under Splitter...and we don't know if it'll all be positive once Dundon starts making his moves. And I don't want to celebrate in the face of another's misfortune, i.e. Chauncey...But overall? Yeah, good stuff.

I cant imagine ownership can be any worse, this team has been essentially run by Bert Kolde and his yes men in Cronin/billups and it's been awful.

The only thing that we didnt do this off season that would've made it perfect is trading jerami & not extending chauncey, jerami is untradeable for anything realistic I imagine (not gonna give up 2-3 1sts to undo that mistake) and chauncey probably wont get paid, lucky them for getting out of that deal..

Sharpe and toumanis contracts were well done. Camara got the max he could Sharpe though im surprised about.

I am love hate with Cronin. He hasnt killed us but Id still move on because he doesn't move the needle enough in trades abd the jerami contact and jrue trade were pretty meh IMHO. The jrue deal cost us the ability to extend deni

If Dundon cleans house and brings in a maligned GM and HC because of perceived success and "wins", I'd say it could get A LOT worse...but fingers crossed he doesn't go that route.

I really like the Jrue/Simons swap. For all the "go-to" scoring ability of Simons, he was never going to be THE guy, and Jrue makes up for that in a lot of little ways. A much better basketball player, IMO.

As for Jrue making Deni impossible? I don't think that's really true. I think Deni's current contract and the 140% CBA rule on extensions makes Deni hard to retain, more than anything. He'll test FA waters for sure, and the Blazers may have to make room to resign him.

[PDXKnight]

Yeah, in terms of positive offseasons...I can't really think of a better one going back a loooooong way. It rivals the 2006 Roy/Aldridge draft for me, in terms of the positivity I've felt.

I do wonder if Grant is going to stay on the Bench under Splitter...and we don't know if it'll all be positive once Dundon starts making his moves. And I don't want to celebrate in the face of another's misfortune, i.e. Chauncey...But overall? Yeah, good stuff.

I cant imagine ownership can be any worse, this team has been essentially run by Bert Kolde and his yes men in Cronin/billups and it's been awful.

The only thing that we didnt do this off season that would've made it perfect is trading jerami & not extending chauncey, jerami is untradeable for anything realistic I imagine (not gonna give up 2-3 1sts to undo that mistake) and chauncey probably wont get paid, lucky them for getting out of that deal..

Sharpe and toumanis contracts were well done. Camara got the max he could Sharpe though im surprised about.

I am love hate with Cronin. He hasnt killed us but Id still move on because he doesn't move the needle enough in trades abd the jerami contact and jrue trade were pretty meh IMHO. The jrue deal cost us the ability to extend deni

If Dundon cleans house and brings in a maligned GM and HC because of perceived success and "wins", I'd say it could get A LOT worse...but fingers crossed he doesn't go that route.

I really like the Jrue/Simons swap. For all the "go-to" scoring ability of Simons, he was never going to be THE guy, and Jrue makes up for that in a lot of little ways. A much better basketball player, IMO.

As for Jrue making Deni impossible? I don't think that's really true. I think Deni's current contract and the 140% CBA rule on extensions makes Deni hard to retain, more than anything. He'll test FA waters for sure, and the Blazers may have to make room to resign him.

Dundon has a proven track record. Change isnt always bad and usually with new ownership its somewhat needed and Inevitable particularly when quite a few in the organization were/are yes men to the current regime. Cronin hasnt been great nor has chauncey i trust that dundon has a better vision than Jody and will get us closer to winning whatever that means. I do think Cronin in particular is too much in kahoots with kolde/Jody and so id say its almost necessary to cut ties to the old regime to prevent a conflict of interest

From a pure talent perspective we got a better player in jrue, from a financial perspective this is a move that to me is undeniably bad. That contract is an albatross for a 35 year old player. I think we will have to agree to disagree here but this was a weird move to me to lock up that much money on a pg who is way past his prime and doesnt fit our window whatsoever. Could've gotten someone for 10-15 mil for a 1+1 deal if we needed a veteran and just bought out ant. I couldve accepted the trade if we got picks or something else that matched the dead weight money we are taking on (15-20 mil annually overpaid imho), they needed to offload that money more than we needed jrue we should have made them pay for bailing them out of that deal

We are fortunate these contracts expire when deni is a fa at least as we should have room to resign him id imagine depending on DC's cap hold but because of Jrue's 3rd year it hampers our ability to extend deni in advance leaving us no choice but to trade him or let him hit fa (unless we make a move before that point). Again probably will will have to agree to disagree here but Jrue is vastly overpaid for his current production level and I will always be against this level of cap waste. Too often we burn potential cap space like drunken sailors when in the NBA cap space creates room to take advantage of desperation. Id rather be capitalizing on desperation than sitting on the sidelines or sacrificing talent to undo a mistake.

[Blazinaway]

I am hoping Grant has a rebound year after last season's awful play. If he does I think that contract is at least tradeable perhaps for a large expiring or different "decent" player/players with shorter contracts

[Walton1one]

With Billups likely out what did we NOT do this offseason that was generally wanted by the fanbase -

Simons gone.
Ayton gone.
Billups gone.
Grant to the bench.
Big swing in the draft.
Camara locked up to a lower AV contract than generally expected.
Sharpe locked up to a lower AV contract than generally expected.
New ownership that by all indications is not intent on moving the team + owner that seems invested in winning per his Hockey team history.

This offseason has checked all the boxes that the general consensus here were hoping for with a Dame reunion the icing on the cake.

What else could reasonably be asked for? How can this not be seen as one of the best off seasons in the past decade plus?

A lot else, actually. Starting with :

- Jettisoning Cronin-& his Asst. GM, Oliva - sub .400 W\L record after 4 years, two timeline nonsense, continuing with acquisitions of Holiday\Dame, poor roster management, I mean the guy is the architect of this roster and has literally doomed this team to multiple years of mediocrity

- Schmitz and the rest of the scouting staff - Underwhelming at best, poor talent evaluation and acquisition. Three Top 10 picks, Four Lottery picks, have whiffed on all other picks and have little of anything to 100% rely on from their lottery picks, that is not good, that is really bad...

- Cleaning out the bottom end of the roster & 2-ways: Murray, Rupert, Reath, Wesley, Love, Cissoko, Cooke that provides little\nothing of value to this team. If you think Wesley\Murray are key components of a winning team then you need to take off your rose colored glasses. You want to say as 14th\15th man they would be fine, ok, well right now they are 7th/8th man

- Jettisoning Williams & Grant. One is always hurt and the other one is butthurt. Both are overpaid for what they provide. Does anyone else really believe Grant can sustain his one night "I'm pissed to be coming off the bench" performance, when he has been mailing it in the last few years?

So, congratulations I guess? They went from complete crapshow to semi crapshow? The fundamental issues with this roster still remain: No shooting. Poor offense. No real center to count on after DC. No bench depth whatsoever. Three PG that expect to start, which will be a major issue NEXT year.

Is the goal to go all in on two 36-year old guards next year and sell out young guys\picks to build around that? For what? A 2-year run as a playoff fodder? What a brilliant plan Cronin has conceived.

[zzaj]

I cant imagine ownership can be any worse, this team has been essentially run by Bert Kolde and his yes men in Cronin/billups and it's been awful.

The only thing that we didnt do this off season that would've made it perfect is trading jerami & not extending chauncey, jerami is untradeable for anything realistic I imagine (not gonna give up 2-3 1sts to undo that mistake) and chauncey probably wont get paid, lucky them for getting out of that deal..

Sharpe and toumanis contracts were well done. Camara got the max he could Sharpe though im surprised about.

I am love hate with Cronin. He hasnt killed us but Id still move on because he doesn't move the needle enough in trades abd the jerami contact and jrue trade were pretty meh IMHO. The jrue deal cost us the ability to extend deni

If Dundon cleans house and brings in a maligned GM and HC because of perceived success and "wins", I'd say it could get A LOT worse...but fingers crossed he doesn't go that route.

I really like the Jrue/Simons swap. For all the "go-to" scoring ability of Simons, he was never going to be THE guy, and Jrue makes up for that in a lot of little ways. A much better basketball player, IMO.

As for Jrue making Deni impossible? I don't think that's really true. I think Deni's current contract and the 140% CBA rule on extensions makes Deni hard to retain, more than anything. He'll test FA waters for sure, and the Blazers may have to make room to resign him.

Dundon has a proven track record. Change isnt always bad and usually with new ownership its somewhat needed and Inevitable particularly when quite a few in the organization were/are yes men to the current regime. Cronin hasnt been great nor has chauncey i trust that dundon has a better vision than Jody and will get us closer to winning whatever that means. I do think Cronin in particular is too much in kahoots with kolde/Jody and so id say its almost necessary to cut ties to the old regime to prevent a conflict of interest

From a pure talent perspective we got a better player in jrue, from a financial perspective this is a move that to me is undeniably bad. That contract is an albatross for a 35 year old player. I think we will have to agree to disagree here but this was a weird move to me to lock up that much money on a pg who is way past his prime and doesnt fit our window whatsoever. Could've gotten someone for 10-15 mil for a 1+1 deal if we needed a veteran and just bought out ant. I couldve accepted the trade if we got picks or something else that matched the dead weight money we are taking on (15-20 mil annually overpaid imho), they needed to offload that money more than we needed jrue we should have made them pay for bailing them out of that deal

We are fortunate these contracts expire when deni is a fa at least as we should have room to resign him id imagine depending on DC's cap hold but because of Jrue's 3rd year it hampers our ability to extend deni in advance leaving us no choice but to trade him or let him hit fa (unless we make a move before that point). Again probably will will have to agree to disagree here but Jrue is vastly overpaid for his current production level and I will always be against this level of cap waste. Too often we burn potential cap space like drunken sailors when in the NBA cap space creates room to take advantage of desperation. Id rather be capitalizing on desperation than sitting on the sidelines or sacrificing talent to undo a mistake.

I certainly agree that the roster construction is wonky. i.e. having 2 veteran guards, one of them an established starter and at a high cost, and one of them waiting in the wings to start, for a rebuilding team that has 2 very young lotto pick guards a few years in, who need all the ambrosia that starting and ending games has to offer. It's the perfect incapsulation of the "fence straddle" metaphor, that I think Wiz started...

With Simons, I think the Blazers liked and coveted Jrue and he was simply the best that they could get for Simons--whose player archetype isn't very valued in the NBA, currently.

[PDXKnight]

If Dundon cleans house and brings in a maligned GM and HC because of perceived success and "wins", I'd say it could get A LOT worse...but fingers crossed he doesn't go that route.

I really like the Jrue/Simons swap. For all the "go-to" scoring ability of Simons, he was never going to be THE guy, and Jrue makes up for that in a lot of little ways. A much better basketball player, IMO.

As for Jrue making Deni impossible? I don't think that's really true. I think Deni's current contract and the 140% CBA rule on extensions makes Deni hard to retain, more than anything. He'll test FA waters for sure, and the Blazers may have to make room to resign him.

Dundon has a proven track record. Change isnt always bad and usually with new ownership its somewhat needed and Inevitable particularly when quite a few in the organization were/are yes men to the current regime. Cronin hasnt been great nor has chauncey i trust that dundon has a better vision than Jody and will get us closer to winning whatever that means. I do think Cronin in particular is too much in kahoots with kolde/Jody and so id say its almost necessary to cut ties to the old regime to prevent a conflict of interest

From a pure talent perspective we got a better player in jrue, from a financial perspective this is a move that to me is undeniably bad. That contract is an albatross for a 35 year old player. I think we will have to agree to disagree here but this was a weird move to me to lock up that much money on a pg who is way past his prime and doesnt fit our window whatsoever. Could've gotten someone for 10-15 mil for a 1+1 deal if we needed a veteran and just bought out ant. I couldve accepted the trade if we got picks or something else that matched the dead weight money we are taking on (15-20 mil annually overpaid imho), they needed to offload that money more than we needed jrue we should have made them pay for bailing them out of that deal

We are fortunate these contracts expire when deni is a fa at least as we should have room to resign him id imagine depending on DC's cap hold but because of Jrue's 3rd year it hampers our ability to extend deni in advance leaving us no choice but to trade him or let him hit fa (unless we make a move before that point). Again probably will will have to agree to disagree here but Jrue is vastly overpaid for his current production level and I will always be against this level of cap waste. Too often we burn potential cap space like drunken sailors when in the NBA cap space creates room to take advantage of desperation. Id rather be capitalizing on desperation than sitting on the sidelines or sacrificing talent to undo a mistake.

I certainly agree that the roster construction is wonky. i.e. having 2 veteran guards, one of them an established starter and at a high cost, and one of them waiting in the wings to start, for a rebuilding team that has 2 very young lotto pick guards a few years in, who need all the ambrosia that starting and ending games has to offer. It's the perfect incapsulation of the "fence straddle" metaphor, that I think Wiz started...

With Simons, I think the Blazers liked and coveted Jrue and he was simply the best that they could get for Simons--whose player archetype isn't very valued in the NBA, currently.

If thats the best we could do why not be stuck with him 1 year or waive him rather than extending the financial implications for 2 additional years of an albatross contract?

[zzaj]

Dundon has a proven track record. Change isnt always bad and usually with new ownership its somewhat needed and Inevitable particularly when quite a few in the organization were/are yes men to the current regime. Cronin hasnt been great nor has chauncey i trust that dundon has a better vision than Jody and will get us closer to winning whatever that means. I do think Cronin in particular is too much in kahoots with kolde/Jody and so id say its almost necessary to cut ties to the old regime to prevent a conflict of interest

From a pure talent perspective we got a better player in jrue, from a financial perspective this is a move that to me is undeniably bad. That contract is an albatross for a 35 year old player. I think we will have to agree to disagree here but this was a weird move to me to lock up that much money on a pg who is way past his prime and doesnt fit our window whatsoever. Could've gotten someone for 10-15 mil for a 1+1 deal if we needed a veteran and just bought out ant. I couldve accepted the trade if we got picks or something else that matched the dead weight money we are taking on (15-20 mil annually overpaid imho), they needed to offload that money more than we needed jrue we should have made them pay for bailing them out of that deal

We are fortunate these contracts expire when deni is a fa at least as we should have room to resign him id imagine depending on DC's cap hold but because of Jrue's 3rd year it hampers our ability to extend deni in advance leaving us no choice but to trade him or let him hit fa (unless we make a move before that point). Again probably will will have to agree to disagree here but Jrue is vastly overpaid for his current production level and I will always be against this level of cap waste. Too often we burn potential cap space like drunken sailors when in the NBA cap space creates room to take advantage of desperation. Id rather be capitalizing on desperation than sitting on the sidelines or sacrificing talent to undo a mistake.

I certainly agree that the roster construction is wonky. i.e. having 2 veteran guards, one of them an established starter and at a high cost, and one of them waiting in the wings to start, for a rebuilding team that has 2 very young lotto pick guards a few years in, who need all the ambrosia that starting and ending games has to offer. It's the perfect incapsulation of the "fence straddle" metaphor, that I think Wiz started...

With Simons, I think the Blazers liked and coveted Jrue and he was simply the best that they could get for Simons--whose player archetype isn't very valued in the NBA, currently.

If thats the best we could do why not be stuck with him 1 year or waive him rather than extending the financial implications for 2 additional years of an albatross contract?

Well, firstly...I don't know that that's the best the Blazers could do, obviously. But it seems like players of Simons' ilk sure aren't fetching much in the trade market these days. Apparently, Boston tried to resell Simons and ended up keeping him--so that's pretty telling, too.

In terms of keeping Simons or waiving him? I guess that was a possibility...one that I'm glad the team didn't ultimately entertain.

Jrue an "albatross"? I guess that depends on what you mean by "albatross". I tend to think of players that are locked up for huge money for a lot of years and that are paid way above their skill level, or players with those that are perpetually injured for more than half a season as "Albatross" contracts--contracts that seriously impact team moves in the short and long term. See the Evan Turner's or Ben Simmons' of the world...

I don't really consider Jrue an "albatross" per se. Is he overpaid based on production? Absolutely. By quite a bit. But if he can stay healthy and ends up something like a 12/5/5 guy for the next couple of years, that's at least worth something at 20ish percent of the Salary Cap. We have to remember that he's a legitimate 2-way player on a team with very few of those, who also happens to be an NBA champion, DPOY and an important part of several contending teams. That stuff has value.

I tend to think Jerami Grant's contract as more of an issue than Jrue, and he's younger and paid a little less...because Grant has never demonstrated that he can contribute to a winning team.