Wizenheimer wrote:Walton1one wrote:Remember these preseason comments by Cronin? They seem relevant now.“Very pleased with the offseason”
“We have a roster we really like”
“We have a lot of veterans who all have multiple additional steps they can take”
“We value continuity “
Yes, he really said that
yeah...this is Cronin's roster and it sucks. Now, Cronin isn't the condescending pryk that Olshey was, but his decisions may actually be worse in many ways.
Cronin's job 1 was to dismantle Olshey's idiotic roster. He did that, probably with the Vulcans leering over his shoulder. Job 2 was to develop a roster of attractive assets and young prospects. The young prospect part of the job has been remedially successful, but his collection of assets is the opposite of attractive. That's a failure. Worse, is the value of those assets have only gone down. Simons, Grant, Ayton, Thybulle, Timelord....the vets have either performed poorly or had little value to begin with. For the young guys, Sharpe has yet to consistently establish anything; Scoot is a massive disappointment; And Clingan can't seem to be given enough minutes by the coach to accomplish anything.
The Blazers added Avdija, but they did so at a cost of 4 draft picks (and Brogdon), and in a practical sense, he's probably the kind of player that should be added to a playoff team, not to a team as bad as Portland. He's a good player, but he's kind of wasted on this Blazer team. And while Camara has been a real bright spot, it's really hard to see both Avdija and Camara as starters at forwards, not if the Blazers want to compete for a playoff spot. By the way, Camara will be 25 in May
I looked before I started this post, back in the 2018-19 season, game threads were 5-8 pages long. There was a 3 page thread for a pre-season game. The combination of Jody + Cronin + Billups is killing interest in the Blazers. Dumpster fires at every level and there doesn't seem to be anybody interested in dealing with it.
Mostly agree with this. I admit my interest is probably at an all-time low, but that's also because there are simply better uses of my time (#ScoDucks).
I wouldn't mind more actively following a bad team if there was hope.
We all know Jody + Cronin + Billups isn't going to win anything. No need to beat that dead horse.
We knew since before he was hired that Billups was not ready to (possibly ever) be a winning basketball coach.
Other than massively overpaying Grant, I don't think Cronin's moves were overly bad. You can sell me on "Ayton is young and maybe just needs a change of scenery". But as Wizenheimer points out, you look at the value out to value in ratio, and we have a team of young role players paired with some overpriced mediocre veterans.
Add in a coach that gets blown out by 50 on a monthly basis. Not that exciting as a fan.
Best path going forward is probably to trade Grant for any non-long term salary we can get, then just ride out Ayton and Simons so the team has cap space in two seasons. Hope we get lucky in the draft or make a smart trade.
