Draft Thread (#27 and #31)

[mikhailjordan]

It was a very classless move but on the flipside a lot of Portland's supposed draft "steals" have fizzled hard...

[60cent]

If we somehow able to land Damion James, id be a very happy.

Ahahaha!! Prayers answered. Yeah baby!!!

[60cent]

Thorns incompetence shines through. Dallas gets the 25th pick for $3mil, we trade our 2 picks for the 24...to move up 3 spots. Look at what competent GMs did in this draft (Pritchard/Presti)

I dont think its incompetence at all. We just had the pieces to pull it through, Dallas didnt. If we would've paid 3 mil for that pick then we'd then be stuck with another first rounder that would've jeopardized the cap, although its a small amount but still would've added.

Another player in the second round is not gonna make us better anyways. And if we really wanted to get another player and pay then we could've just probably kept CDR.

No damage done. We got the player we wanted that will work hard for us and will make us a lil tougher. Plus, cap space right is more important.

[enetric]

If we somehow able to land Damion James, id be a very happy fan no matter what happens with the first pick. This guy is a very hardworking player and always atracts the ball for some reason ala Paul Millsap.

Hey now! Look at that!

Someone with some optimism tonight. Nice job 60...

[enetric]

It was a very classless move but on the flipside a lot of Portland's supposed draft "steals" have fizzled hard...

I dont think that's fair. A lot of their guys are duplicated and stuck opportunity wise. he should have repackaged some of them faster. In the end this is about Oden Vs. Durant. But hey...Portland has done it before. Aldridge so no Durant....Drexler so no Jordan.

Can they hang that on Pritchard too???? Lindbergh baby?

[deviljets7]

I have no problem with the pick of James itself. Considering the price to move up to 24, the deal was a little perplexing, but I'm not going to flip out over it.

While VC4P and others have questioned the upside of the pick, if you really believe James is an 8-year NBA player (even if it's only as a role player/6th man peak), it's a good pick at that stage of the draft. I understand the temptation to swing for the fences, but considering the amount of strikeouts in that range, I'll take the single that moves from 1st to 3rd.

[enetric]

Maybe we are looking at this all wrong. See, we are looking at this like...only 3 spots up for the 31?

Maybe the Nets fell in love with him. Maybe HE was absolutely their guy. And all that talk about dealing for the 19th pick...perhaps HE was the target all along.

And when he dropped to the Hawks they made the offer and felt...Wow we got our guy for even less of a cap hit. Lets do it.

[Rockice_8]

I thought we had a huge need for a shooter and one fell to us but I guess Thorn will take care of that later. You could clearly see that when we dumped CDR we were not going to add 3 picks this year. I do like James he is a solid player can be a Wilson Chandler/Beasley type player. Stick some jumpers, play solid D, slash, and rebound. He seems like a nice role player could be a stretch 4 or a strong 3.

[demens]

What a slap in the face for KP huh?
Finally fired about an hour before the draft and asked to still complete the draft for the Blazers.

That's disgraceful. I personally think Pritchard is a very overrated GM, but not even Isiah deserves that kind of treatment out the door.

I know he spends, but it's hard to consider Allen a good owner anymore with nonsense like that.

How is he overrated? Everything he touches turns to gold.

[mikhailjordan]

Off the top of my head Kevin Pritchard is overrated, it's hard to piece together all of his deals (something I'm working on right now), but I will say this if you're going to give him credit for drafting Roy and Aldridge (he was director of player personnel at the time NOT the GM) you also have to put the blame on him for the terrible Martell Webster deal (the Blazers traded the 3rd overall pick that year, Deron Williams, for Martell Webster, Lineas Kleiza, and another future first round pick that ended up being Joel Freeland)... Don't forget the Darius Miles fiasco either, that one actually happened when Pritchard was officially Blazers GM.

[mikhailjordan]

The Zach Randolph trade in all its glory:

http://i48.tinypic.com/2wqu9t3.jpg
http://assets.nydailynews.com/img/2008/ ... knicks.jpg

[demens]

The Zach Randolph trade in all its glory:

http://i48.tinypic.com/2wqu9t3.jpg
http://assets.nydailynews.com/img/2008/ ... knicks.jpg

The summary is very misleading. It makes it seem like he traded all those players to end up with the guys in the acquired column which is not the case since a bunch of the traded players were traded for one another.

The summary should be that he traded:

Zach Randolph
Fred Jones
Dan Dickau
Nichols (#53)
Sergio Rodriguez
Cash

for

Steve Francis
Channing Frye
Mills (#55)
Pendergraph (#31)
A.Johnson (#34)

So whats wrong with that?

[mikhailjordan]

The Fernandez trade would not have occurred if it were not for the trade exception generated in the Randolph trade, so in essence it was a sub-trade that directly resulted from the Randolph trade.

As for what's wrong with it... I'll get to that later, but looking at these other trades I'm having a hard time trying to understand the argument that Pritchard is a master at finding diamonds in the rough...

edit:

I am working on the organization of the chart right now, I'm thinking about organizing it by year...

http://i50.tinypic.com/11u9eo8.jpg

[deviljets7]

What a slap in the face for KP huh?
Finally fired about an hour before the draft and asked to still complete the draft for the Blazers.

That's disgraceful. I personally think Pritchard is a very overrated GM, but not even Isiah deserves that kind of treatment out the door.

I know he spends, but it's hard to consider Allen a good owner anymore with nonsense like that.

How is he overrated? Everything he touches turns to gold.

Pritchard did a very good job accumulating assets and creating salary cap space (though trading away the opportunity to get Paul or Deron for Martell Webster is mind-numbing. Where Pritchard failed miserably was when it came time to turn that glut of picks/prospects and salary flexibility into the core piece(s) that would have made them an elite team.

18 months ago, Pritchard had a $14 million insured expiring contract (Raef LaFrenz) and a boatload of picks/prospects or the option of going into the summer with around $8-9 million in space.

To have that collection of resources and to only end up with Andre Miller is inexcusable and demonstrates how badly he overplayed his hand there. The only reason it didn't end up even worse is because Pritchard's first choice of Hedo Turkoglu renegged on a $45+ million contract.

[demens]

Pritchard did a very good job accumulating assets and creating salary cap space (though trading away the opportunity to get Paul or Deron for Martell Webster is mind-numbing. Where Pritchard failed miserably was when it came time to turn that glut of picks/prospects and salary flexibility into the core piece(s) that would have made them an elite team.

18 months ago, Pritchard had a $14 million insured expiring contract (Raef LaFrenz) and a boatload of picks/prospects or the option of going into the summer with around $8-9 million in space.

To have that collection of resources and to only end up with Andre Miller is inexcusable and demonstrates how badly he overplayed his hand there. The only reason it didn't end up even worse is because Pritchard's first choice of Hedo Turkoglu renegged on a $45+ million contract.

Failed miserably huh, the guy turned the Jailblazers into a legit play-off team that was 1 player away from being an elite team.

1st, people need to make up their minds. On one hand you have people refusing to give him credit for the for the 2006 draft since he was only an assistant GM and on the other you have people blaming him for the 2005 draft when he was director of player personnel. If he was the man in charge that year, he did miss out on Paul/Williams. Name me 1 GM that has not had a miss hit at some point. If he was in charge, he took a shot at a high school kid and he did get another 1st rounder along with that, which ended up being Kleiza, who later turned into Jarrett Jack. Yeah, we're not talking about Chris Paul here, but these guys are quality rotational players, we're not talking about some scrubs that can't make a roster. So i would say that made him a miserable failure.

As for Andre Miller. His team needed a pg, he went out and got them one of the better ones on the market.
http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/columns/s ... nts-080915
Who in that grand free agent list was suppose to be the big game changer that Pritchard missed out on? I dont see anyone who makes that team any more elite then they already are. Andre Miller was actually a damn good signing and i guess he continues to be one of NBAs most underated players still, even at the age of 34. His options were also severely limited by Darius Miles coming back and playing. But despite that, the vast amount of injuries Portaland was hit with, which even included their coach, they still managed to win 50 games.

If you look at the Blazers i dont see how you can't admit that is one of the best put together rosters in the league. They have a PG, they have a superstar, they have a post presence, they have youth, they have depth, they have shooters, they have defenders, they literally have everything. And because Pritchard was able to collect a glut of picks and assets it allowed them to survive a season where both their starting Center and his back-up went out for the year. And the way he leaves this team they are still in a position that leaves them with lots of flexibility going forward. Tons of prospects, tons of tradeable peaces. Ohh yeah, and no bad contracts. You can argue that he might have gotten lucky with Hedo turning them down, but who knows really, maybe Hedo would have been a great fit on that team. 2 time NBA exec of the year Bryan Collengello thought Hedo was worth even more so...

Only reason Blazers are not title contenders is because Greg Oden's career has been 1 injury after another, and that is in no way Kevin Pritchards fault. 30/30 GMs would have picked Oden over Durrant that year.

[deviljets7]

As for Andre Miller. His team needed a pg, he went out and got them one of the better ones on the market.
http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/columns/s ... nts-080915
Who in that grand free agent list was suppose to be the big game changer that Pritchard missed out on? I dont see anyone who makes that team any more elite then they already are. Andre Miller was actually a damn good signing and i guess he continues to be one of NBAs most underated players still, even at the age of 34. His options were also severely limited by Darius Miles coming back and playing. But despite that, the vast amount of injuries Portaland was hit with, which even included their coach, they still managed to win 50 games.

The issue isn't with the Miller signing itself. But again, if the FA market is that weak and you're limited by the Darius Miles thing, how do you let a trade chip like LaFrentz was expire and get nothing for it? If he had traded LaFrentz's big expiring contract for veteran help, he would have also had a MLE at his disposal (which wasn't much less than what he ended up with in terms of cap space). To keep that cap space Pritchard had to sacrifice a couple of (albeit lesser) prospects for that space. I'm sorry, but that is a flat out poor use of resources.

Pritchard is not a bad GM. I don't believe he deserved to be fired and he should definitely get another GM job. I wouldn't be upset if that place was here. But some people on RealGM praise him as if he is Jerry West Jr.