Cutter wrote:If elite rim protection is what we need, then we should have kept the #2 rim protector in the league when we had him. His name..... Robin Lopez. Robin was the second best rim protector last year, after Roy Hibbert. Robin was better at rim protection than Serge Ibaka (#3), Joakim Noah, Andrew Bogut, Dwight Howard etc.
Defensively Robin was a beast last year, and it could be argued his defense was the hidden catalyst why Portland did so well last year.
Too bad so many people on this board (myself included) soured on Robin and didn't give him the time he needed to develop. He was never going to contribute much offensively, but he would be perfect for what we need right now.
I wonder if Portland would trade him back to us?
When we traded him, he was SLopez and not the same guy is today. When we moved him, he was coming off back surgery and lost a ton of athleticism and looked even more robotic than he did when he first started. He's coming into his own now but knowing what we knew then, we did the right thing.