Game 72: Portland vs Boston 3: 00pm Chargetv and KUNP

[PDXKnight]

I think I'd rather have a 12 ppg type if he could play defense and play within the offense rather than 19 points, zero defense and iso ball. Sure you've gotta have an iso player but ant isn't the guy we want in critical sets

I get that logic, but we do have a lot of defenders on this team which is why this season turned around in late January once the team started to click. We do lack offense. Too many wings with good defense and lousy offense like Thybulle and Murray. Murray's going to be out of the league in the near future because his offense just stinks. If he could develop a good 3-point shot, he may save his future. It's why Luke Babbitt (career 40% 3-point shooter) was in the league for 8 years. I doubt Murray is going to last more than 4 seasons because his defense is not nearly the defense (not yet at this moment) we get from Deni, Camara and Thybulle.

Ant is valuable to keep in the future if he's willing to be a 6th man where he can a Jamal Crawford like player. One thing Ant does is create spacing that helps someone like Sharpe and Deni have more spacing out there on the offensive end which is beneficial. But as a starting PG, Ant's gotta go if he's not willing to be moved to the bench. Because player's expectations change once they're moved and he would likely accept a move to the bench on another team.

As for Scoot, he's shooting is better which is awesome. But he's still very wreck less out there more than he should. Still a disappointment overall.

with/without samples sizes can be tricky, but:

Blazers are 28-40 (.411)with Simons; and are 4-1 (.800) without him
Blazers are 16-24 (.400) with Ayton; and are 16-17 (.485) without him

on the other hand

Blazers 24-24(.500) with Grant; and 8-17 (.320) without him

now, I've seen the games and I'm pretty certain that the impact of Simons-Ayton-Grant has been worth a minimum of 10 wins that the Blazers wouldn't have without them, in those games. That doesn't mean Portland's record would be that much worse without those guys because we can't really know how the young Blazers would have responded as a team, on their own. Portland may have ended up with a similar record at this point. But we can't know that. We can infer that any wins those veterans have added have been damaging to Portland's lottery odds

Simons in particular has shot the Blazers into wins with some timely hot shooting. That's been easy to observe. What is not as easy to observe is how many losses his abysmal defense has propelled Portland too. We do know his career BPM is -1.1, and that matches the assertion he's a net negative

why does Grant's w/wo look so much different than Simons & Ayton? I'm not sure, It could just be artifacts of schedule and and who else played, or didn't play. It could be that a forward rotation of Avdija-Camara-Grant is much better than a guard rotation of Simons-Sharpe-Scoot or a C rotation of Ayton/Clingan (which is two drop-coverage C's with poor perimeter skills)

bottom line is I believe all the chatter about how the Blazers would miss Simons or Ayton are unfounded. What Portland would lose would be more than offset by gains in other aspects on the floor

Exactly they are net negatives. One can frame the conversation however but the reality is those 2 guys aren't winning us anything especially for their price tag which accounts for 40-50 percent of our cap for not close to all star production.

In a dream scenario of course we would have a true number 1 option who should be taking big shots and either plays defense or is enough of a threat offensively to mitigate those weaknesses (then your focus is surrounding that player with defenders aka not CJ next to Dame). But Ant is not the player to carry us to wins, he could be a 6th man energy guy off the bench and maybe do well in that role but as someone mentioned earlier he probably wouldn't accept that without first getting a change of scenery

[Wizenheimer]

Spoiler:

I get that logic, but we do have a lot of defenders on this team which is why this season turned around in late January once the team started to click. We do lack offense. Too many wings with good defense and lousy offense like Thybulle and Murray. Murray's going to be out of the league in the near future because his offense just stinks. If he could develop a good 3-point shot, he may save his future. It's why Luke Babbitt (career 40% 3-point shooter) was in the league for 8 years. I doubt Murray is going to last more than 4 seasons because his defense is not nearly the defense (not yet at this moment) we get from Deni, Camara and Thybulle.

Ant is valuable to keep in the future if he's willing to be a 6th man where he can a Jamal Crawford like player. One thing Ant does is create spacing that helps someone like Sharpe and Deni have more spacing out there on the offensive end which is beneficial. But as a starting PG, Ant's gotta go if he's not willing to be moved to the bench. Because player's expectations change once they're moved and he would likely accept a move to the bench on another team.

As for Scoot, he's shooting is better which is awesome. But he's still very wreck less out there more than he should. Still a disappointment overall.

with/without samples sizes can be tricky, but:

Blazers are 28-40 (.411)with Simons; and are 4-1 (.800) without him
Blazers are 16-24 (.400) with Ayton; and are 16-17 (.485) without him

on the other hand

Blazers 24-24(.500) with Grant; and 8-17 (.320) without him

now, I've seen the games and I'm pretty certain that the impact of Simons-Ayton-Grant has been worth a minimum of 10 wins that the Blazers wouldn't have without them, in those games. That doesn't mean Portland's record would be that much worse without those guys because we can't really know how the young Blazers would have responded as a team, on their own. Portland may have ended up with a similar record at this point. But we can't know that. We can infer that any wins those veterans have added have been damaging to Portland's lottery odds

Simons in particular has shot the Blazers into wins with some timely hot shooting. That's been easy to observe. What is not as easy to observe is how many losses his abysmal defense has propelled Portland too. We do know his career BPM is -1.1, and that matches the assertion he's a net negative

why does Grant's w/wo look so much different than Simons & Ayton? I'm not sure, It could just be artifacts of schedule and and who else played, or didn't play. It could be that a forward rotation of Avdija-Camara-Grant is much better than a guard rotation of Simons-Sharpe-Scoot or a C rotation of Ayton/Clingan (which is two drop-coverage C's with poor perimeter skills)

bottom line is I believe all the chatter about how the Blazers would miss Simons or Ayton are unfounded. What Portland would lose would be more than offset by gains in other aspects on the floor

Exactly they are net negatives. One can frame the conversation however but the reality is those 2 guys aren't winning us anything especially for their price tag which accounts for 40-50 percent of our cap for not close to all star production.

In a dream scenario of course we would have a true number 1 option who should be taking big shots and either plays defense or is enough of a threat offensively to mitigate those weaknesses (then your focus is surrounding that player with defenders aka not CJ next to Dame). But Ant is not the player to carry us to wins, he could be a 6th man energy guy off the bench and maybe do well in that role but as someone mentioned earlier he probably wouldn't accept that without first getting a change of scenery

Simons would also have to accept a major reduction in salary because no team is going to want a 30M/year 6th man on the tier that Simons inhabits

[PDXKnight]

Spoiler:

with/without samples sizes can be tricky, but:

Blazers are 28-40 (.411)with Simons; and are 4-1 (.800) without him
Blazers are 16-24 (.400) with Ayton; and are 16-17 (.485) without him

on the other hand

Blazers 24-24(.500) with Grant; and 8-17 (.320) without him

now, I've seen the games and I'm pretty certain that the impact of Simons-Ayton-Grant has been worth a minimum of 10 wins that the Blazers wouldn't have without them, in those games. That doesn't mean Portland's record would be that much worse without those guys because we can't really know how the young Blazers would have responded as a team, on their own. Portland may have ended up with a similar record at this point. But we can't know that. We can infer that any wins those veterans have added have been damaging to Portland's lottery odds

Simons in particular has shot the Blazers into wins with some timely hot shooting. That's been easy to observe. What is not as easy to observe is how many losses his abysmal defense has propelled Portland too. We do know his career BPM is -1.1, and that matches the assertion he's a net negative

why does Grant's w/wo look so much different than Simons & Ayton? I'm not sure, It could just be artifacts of schedule and and who else played, or didn't play. It could be that a forward rotation of Avdija-Camara-Grant is much better than a guard rotation of Simons-Sharpe-Scoot or a C rotation of Ayton/Clingan (which is two drop-coverage C's with poor perimeter skills)

bottom line is I believe all the chatter about how the Blazers would miss Simons or Ayton are unfounded. What Portland would lose would be more than offset by gains in other aspects on the floor

Exactly they are net negatives. One can frame the conversation however but the reality is those 2 guys aren't winning us anything especially for their price tag which accounts for 40-50 percent of our cap for not close to all star production.

In a dream scenario of course we would have a true number 1 option who should be taking big shots and either plays defense or is enough of a threat offensively to mitigate those weaknesses (then your focus is surrounding that player with defenders aka not CJ next to Dame). But Ant is not the player to carry us to wins, he could be a 6th man energy guy off the bench and maybe do well in that role but as someone mentioned earlier he probably wouldn't accept that without first getting a change of scenery

Simons would also have to accept a major reduction in salary because no team is going to want a 30M/year 6th man on the tier that Simons inhabits

He likely won't have a choice when it comes to his next contract.

[Norm2953]

If he's going to have to take a cut in salary in his next deal, he may as well sign to play at home in
Orlando.

It'll be interesting if Ayton faces the same situation for Portland might take him back if was making
$20-25 Million instead of what he's making today.

[Shem]

with/without samples sizes can be tricky, but:

Blazers are 28-40 (.411)with Simons; and are 4-1 (.800) without him
Blazers are 16-24 (.400) with Ayton; and are 16-17 (.485) without him

on the other hand

Blazers 24-24(.500) with Grant; and 8-17 (.320) without him

now, I've seen the games and I'm pretty certain that the impact of Simons-Ayton-Grant has been worth a minimum of 10 wins that the Blazers wouldn't have without them, in those games. That doesn't mean Portland's record would be that much worse without those guys because we can't really know how the young Blazers would have responded as a team, on their own. Portland may have ended up with a similar record at this point. But we can't know that. We can infer that any wins those veterans have added have been damaging to Portland's lottery odds

Simons in particular has shot the Blazers into wins with some timely hot shooting. That's been easy to observe. What is not as easy to observe is how many losses his abysmal defense has propelled Portland too. We do know his career BPM is -1.1, and that matches the assertion he's a net negative

why does Grant's w/wo look so much different than Simons & Ayton? I'm not sure, It could just be artifacts of schedule and and who else played, or didn't play. It could be that a forward rotation of Avdija-Camara-Grant is much better than a guard rotation of Simons-Sharpe-Scoot or a C rotation of Ayton/Clingan (which is two drop-coverage C's with poor perimeter skills)

bottom line is I believe all the chatter about how the Blazers would miss Simons or Ayton are unfounded. What Portland would lose would be more than offset by gains in other aspects on the floor

We can also look at the quality of opponents and such with those records you brought up. We have also the factors of Deni just leveling up and the defense all of a sudden got better the moment Sharpe got demoted in January which turned the season around.

But you're also factoring Simons as are starting PG which is something I'm advocating to move on from. I'm only okay with keeping him if he's willing to take a reduced role. You do need scoring off the bench. And bench players are not meant to be starter quality. Most 6th man are scoring punches off the bench with weak defense. Look at Jamal Crawford and Jason Terry for example. As long as we have someone like Thybulle out there with him.

I've even seen Billups favor Scoot over Simons during stretch 4th quarter runs because Scoot is playing better out of the two. One does have to wonder if Scoot's slow development the reason why we haven't moved on from Simons yet. Let's face it, if Scoot had become the monster like he was advertised, Simons may have already been moved by the last trading deadline. It wouldn't have matter if Simons was still starting because Scoot would likely be getting more minutes than him overall if he had leveled up.

Ayton is going to be harder to move than Simons, but Grant is going to harder because he has more years left while Ayton and Simons will be expiring contracts. Let's hope that Bert Kolde isn't in love with those guys.

We do have Deni and Camara to look forward to. Those two are the future and will get better. Imagine if we had those two instead of Harkless and Aminu during Dame's time here.

[Wizenheimer]

Exactly they are net negatives. One can frame the conversation however but the reality is those 2 guys aren't winning us anything especially for their price tag which accounts for 40-50 percent of our cap for not close to all star production.

In a dream scenario of course we would have a true number 1 option who should be taking big shots and either plays defense or is enough of a threat offensively to mitigate those weaknesses (then your focus is surrounding that player with defenders aka not CJ next to Dame). But Ant is not the player to carry us to wins, he could be a 6th man energy guy off the bench and maybe do well in that role but as someone mentioned earlier he probably wouldn't accept that without first getting a change of scenery

Simons would also have to accept a major reduction in salary because no team is going to want a 30M/year 6th man on the tier that Simons inhabits

He likely won't have a choice when it comes to his next contract.

two words: Joe Cronin

he paid Simons 25M/year when no other team would have offered over 15M, imo. And he paid Grant 33M/year a year after paying Simons. There is plenty of reason to believe Cronin will give Simons a new deal paying over 30M/year

[Shem]

Simons would also have to accept a major reduction in salary because no team is going to want a 30M/year 6th man on the tier that Simons inhabits

He likely won't have a choice when it comes to his next contract.

two words: Joe Cronin

he paid Simons 25M/year when no other team would have offered over 15M, imo. And he paid Grant 33M/year a year after paying Simons. There is plenty of reason to believe Cronin will give Simons a new deal paying over 30M/year

Or that came from Bert Kolde.

[Wizenheimer]

He likely won't have a choice when it comes to his next contract.

two words: Joe Cronin

he paid Simons 25M/year when no other team would have offered over 15M, imo. And he paid Grant 33M/year a year after paying Simons. There is plenty of reason to believe Cronin will give Simons a new deal paying over 30M/year

Or that came from Bert Kolde.

there is way too much that Cronin had done that is too unlikely to have come from Bert. The "devil made me do it" excuse has major credibility problems, IMO

I really doubt Kolde told Cronin to give Simons 100M instead of 75M; I really doubt Bert told Cronin to hard cap the Blazers in order to sign Gary Payton; Bert didn't tell Cronin to give Grant a 5-year/160M deal instead of a 4-year/100M deal; I really doubt that Kolde ordered Cronin to match the Thybulle offer sheet; Bert didn't order Cronin to covet Ayton for 2 years before trading for him; he didn't tell Cronin to ignore Timelord's injury history and trade for him anyway. Does anybody really believe that it was Kolde that demanded two 1st round picks for Grant? or a 1st for Timelord?

I remember a couple of Olshey apologists asserting that it was Paul Allen who told Olshey to match the Crabbe offer sheet and give a giant offer for Evan Turner. That was pretty clearly an excuse to deflect from truly bad GM decisions. I have no patience for the same excuses being offered for Cronin. If Bert is actually making all the decisions (I'm extremely skeptical), and Cronin doesn't agree with them, then Cronin needs to muster up some integrity an resign...just like Terry Stotts resgned from the Bucks when he disagreed with the HC

[Shem]

two words: Joe Cronin

he paid Simons 25M/year when no other team would have offered over 15M, imo. And he paid Grant 33M/year a year after paying Simons. There is plenty of reason to believe Cronin will give Simons a new deal paying over 30M/year

Or that came from Bert Kolde.

there is way too much that Cronin had done that is too unlikely to have come from Bert. The "devil made me do it" excuse has major credibility problems, IMO

I really doubt Kolde told Cronin to give Simons 100M instead of 75M; I really doubt Bert told Cronin to hard cap the Blazers in order to sign Gary Payton; Bert didn't tell Cronin to give Grant a 5-year/160M deal instead of a 4-year/100M deal; I really doubt that Kolde ordered Cronin to match the Thybulle offer sheet; Bert didn't order Cronin to covet Ayton for 2 years before trading for him; he didn't tell Cronin to ignore Timelord's injury history and trade for him anyway. Does anybody really believe that it was Kolde that demanded two 1st round picks for Grant? or a 1st for Timelord?

I remember a couple of Olshey apologists asserting that it was Paul Allen who told Olshey to match the Crabbe offer sheet and give a giant offer for Evan Turner. That was pretty clearly an excuse to deflect from truly bad GM decisions. I have no patience for the same excuses being offered for Cronin. If Bert is actually making all the decisions (I'm extremely skeptical), and Cronin doesn't agree with them, then Cronin needs to muster up some integrity an resign...just like Terry Stotts resgned from the Bucks when he disagreed with the HC

I've been bringing up Bert Kolde a lot more lately because of Drexler coming out on why he has a strained relationship with the Blazers and why he asked to be traded in the first place. Kolde wanted Rick Adelman to be fired and he got his wish. Drexler was angry about that and wanted out. Just knowing that and the way Drexler described how he has his hands on so many things in the Blazers front office during his time with the team makes me wonder a bit. It does explain why Clyde chose to go into the Hall of Fame as a Rocket.

Drexler skipped 90's night and I know that if he didn't have beef with Kolde being apart of the organization, he would have been there. It was just one night he had to be here even though his wife has cancer. Saying he need to be there to take care of her was just to let us the fans down easy on why he wasn't there. He has the resources to step out for a day to showup.

Look, you can believe Kolde didn't do or order certain roster decisions and maybe Drexler is going overboard because he hates the man. But he could be right since he had more knowledge of what was going on with the front office than we did as fans. Just don't excuse the idea that Kolde could have his hands on any of the decisions Cronin makes.

I was just about to graduate high school when it was announced that Adelman was fired in May 1994. Then the rumors that fall that Drexler asked to be traded happen. He didn't even want to travel to the team to Japan to play the Clippers to open the regular season, but Trader Bob convinced him to go and promised he would work out a trade and got his wish in February 1995, joined the Rockets and got his ring. So all this fits now. As a fan, I was not happy with the Adelman firing and Drexler being traded. Those were gut punches to me. So yeah, I'm going to be open to the idea that Kolde had a hand at any decision the front office makes from now on.

BTW, it's not unheard of for coaches and GM's to get orders from their superiors. They're the boss and GM's work for them. GM's don't make the call whether on going over the cap and going into the first or second apron. That's cleared by ownership since the GM is spending their money. Do you really think the Mavs trading Luka to the Lakers was GM Nico Harrison's call, or Miriam Adelson's? I'm going with Adelson. But it's Mavs fans booing Harrison despite that anyway. That's a "devil made me do it" example for sure.

I think of GM's as mostly the head scout. They make strong suggestions and use data to make their cases and ownership clears the decision. The more established a GM is, the more freedom they likely get. You have to earn the trust of ownership to have more freedom. Cronin is pretty new at this so he likely doesn't have the freedom as someone like Sam Presti does.

So why doesn't Cronin quit then? Because he's getting paid to do a job. He quits, he loses the rest of the money on his contract, but get the rest of it if he's fired. You should ask why Elgin Baylor didn't quit the job as Clippers GM under Donald Sterling who was a racist? He was there for 22 years and put up with his racism. Because it's a job that brings in a steady and comfortable paycheck.