DusterBuster wrote:Spoiler:
I'm sure it won't surprise you that I'm pretty skeptical about some of that
to start with, if Paul Allen believed in the team so much and was aggressive in that belief, Portland would not have either one of those TPE's because Crabbe wouldn't have been traded and Vonleh would still be on the team. Those were aggressive moves in only one direction...getting under the tax line
but just to assume Olshey isn't spouting more snake oil and is conveying the truth:
* Blazers say bye to Layman and they are at 110.5M in guaranteed salary for 8 players (Dame-CJ-Turner-Mo-Meyers-Aminu-Zach-Biggie)
* Blazers say bye to Napier and Connaughton and bring in Baldwin and the 24th pick. Portland is now at 113.5M and the tax line will be 121-122M
* Since Portland is aggressive and believes in the team they re-sign Nurkic for 20M and Davis for 10M
* The tax-MLE is 5.3M. so let's say, Portland being aggressive uses 5M of that exception
* The TPE's total 16.5M. Aggressive Portland uses about 13.5M of those exceptions
that puts Portland at 162M in salary...40M over the tax line. People can do the math if they want but when I calculate the tax on a 40M overage it comes up to 135M in luxury tax. Yeah...I guess you could call it aggressive. Stupid might be another label; 'not-going-to-happen' might be the most accurate. Even if Portland cut that overage in half, they'd still have a 46M tax bill. And how would the Blazers cut that in half? seems pretty hard to do without eliminating Davis and the Crabbe TPE. That's the problem I have with the stuff Olshey says about PA's willingness to pay. When I do the math, PA would have to pay a lot more tax then he has ever had to pay and the immediate precedents, the Crabbe and Vonleh trades went in the exact opposite direction...and those were before getting swept in the playoffs while demonstrating just how poorly constructed the roster is
Portland using those TPE's sure seems like a believe-it-when-seen thing. I can see only about one circumstance where that Crabbe TPE is used. That would be if the Blazers were part of some massive multiple team trade where they used their TPE to first give another team a TPE and then made subsequent moves in the trade that left Portland salary-neutral. A complex trade where TPE's were a timing detail
but maybe PA is fine with paying gobs and gobs of tax for this team. He had to have seen the possibility when he signed off on the 2016 moves
And while I know this will be a highly unpopular quote for everyone but me here, I did enjoy this bit in relation to a different question by Bobby Marks.So you know, I do think it’s getting a little bit out of hand that, you know, if you don’t win 65 games you’re not in the Finals, you should blow up your roster, make your fans sit through 20-win seasons in the hopes of getting lucky in the draft four or five years in a row.
So I don’t think any fan base should have to sit through that, and I certainly don’t expect our fan base to sit through it, because 90% of the time it’s fool’s gold and it doesn’t work out.
are you serious? Are you implying you're the lone voice of reason in the wilderness of irrational posters in this forum? it sure looks like it
no wonder too when the opposing views of everybody else but you and your boy Neil have been distorted, distilled and dumbed-down to an absurd either/or of 65-wins-and-the-finals or blow-it-up...oh yeah...those are the only two choices the Blazers have, and one's not even a choice or option. This over-the-top rhetorical hyperbole lands on only straw men
there are plenty of people here who are not in favor of blowing it up but at the same time believe there are serious issues with the roster that need to be addressed. I've never advocated for trading Lillard and blowing things up. I have advocated against the decision to build the team around the two max deals and mismatched talents of Lillard and CJ. I think that was a bad decision and it was part of that massively deep hole the 2016 lunacy dug and the Blazers are still trying to climb out of....that 'desperation' of that climb is why they have those TPE's by the way
the last 2 or 3 times I've read Olshey interviews I've had the impression he's speaking to an audience of one...and that one is Lillard.
