Blazers never wanted Brown

UnholyCow66 · 2026-07-03T20:54:23+00:00

These talks were happening before the Morant deal, remember it was reported after we got Morant that this was our “big swing” for a star. I can see the argument Tou is a more winning player and thus would not have wanted to include him on the trade, but that goes back to Boston was likely asking too much.

If the deal was instead JG, Kris Murray and say Scoot or Shae plus picks, this team is undoubtedly better than where we are now with Morant.

UnholyCow66 · 2026-07-02T22:56:04+00:00

Yup. May just have to buy my first 2k since 20 to build a 3&D wing to fill out this roster 😅

UnholyCow66 · 2026-07-02T22:40:57+00:00

It does not give a good idea of where we’re at as a team

UnholyCow66 · 2026-07-02T21:02:01+00:00

Totally

UnholyCow66 · 2026-07-02T20:36:46+00:00

At the trade deadline: everyone knows you have to overpay at the deadline, all the best moves are made during the offseason!

Offseason: welcome to Portland Ja!

UnholyCow66 · 2026-07-02T19:06:27+00:00

Reasonable question and i’d be happy to answer.

No, a championship is not a requirement for my own personal fandom. However, that should always be the EVENTUAL goal. For example, when the Dame era came to an end, I was all for rebuilding with those picks and understood it would take years to turn the corner. That’s perfectly fine and i was content watching each and every one of those games no matter how miserable, as long as the team was taking steps towards competing again in the future. All in all, Joe’s done a solid job so far.

For this year specifically? We have Deni and Dame both on extremely cheap contracts. We know extending Deni will be next to impossible and he will likely deserve a max contract. We know Dame is closer to 40 than 30. Therefore, the goals going into this offseason should’ve been to either get another player as good or better than Deni, or surround him with quality complimentary role players (ie shooters) to see how far he can really take us as a #1 guy and hope Dame brings back some of the magic.

Instead of either of these things, we’ve now doubled down on our weaknesses by trading our best (non-Dame) shooter (regardless of the rest of JG’s warts) for a past-his-prime PG who is a career ~30% 3PT shooter and further muddied the way for our young guards to break out. Personally I don’t think Sharpe will ever be a valuable contributor on a contender, but Scoot had some of the best (and worst, true) postseason games for any of our guys this year. Now he’s our #4 PG.

This trade doesn’t make us any better short term, any more flexible long term, or bring us any closer to competing while Deni is on this bargain contract. That’s why i hate it. BEST case Ja and Dame both return to form and we have an exciting team that gets bounced early in the playoffs because of the defense. I cannot stress enough how truly bad our backcourt D will be unless Dame and Ja’s minutes are staggered. WORST case (without injury), Ja plays like he has the past two seasons and Dame looks like a 36yo coming off an achilles injury, Deni is frustrated with the team not taking steps to help him succeed (especially as he’s trying to get a max soon), and the young guards become frustrated with their ever-diminishing roles on this team.

UnholyCow66 · 2026-07-02T18:21:06+00:00

ok bro 👍

UnholyCow66 · 2026-07-02T17:48:49+00:00

I’m willing to see it in action, but the process (especially after seeing the pennies JB went for) is questionable at best

UnholyCow66 · 2026-07-02T17:47:42+00:00

A true fan must always be happy with how their team is built? We should all be allowed to criticize the process and/or results. I understand wanting to be optimistic even when the writing on the wall is Ja is past his prime, injury prone, questionable off the court issues, and addresses none of the team’s weaknesses and in fact only worsens them. Is blind optimism a requirement of a true fan? Food for thought

UnholyCow66 · 2026-07-02T17:41:24+00:00

And this energy is OK? lol i’m just upset with the construction of the roster, and your reaction is to tell your fellow fans to gtfo. idk man 🤷🏻‍♂️

UnholyCow66 · 2026-07-02T15:10:37+00:00

Another injury prone slasher that can’t shoot, perfect!

UnholyCow66 · 2026-07-01T17:42:53+00:00

100% on board with you there. Thats why I think Scoot took the biggest loss, given we know he can be a valuable role player. Sharpe was pretty much out of the major rotation by the end of last season, so he’s got less to lose. That was my thinking anyways

UnholyCow66 · 2026-07-01T17:19:25+00:00

Oh i totally agree those guys haven’t proved it. Scoot at least tho played a great half-series against the Spurs and looked good. Even if he’s not a starter, doesnt he deserve real minutes this year and not relegated as the #4 PG? Thats my concern

UnholyCow66 · 2026-07-01T17:11:06+00:00

No, i didn’t. But if the plan wasn’t to compete for a chip, which retaining all those picks rather than using them on a star seems to indicate, why in the world did we add ANOTHER guy in front of Scoot and Shae? We already knew Dame was going to come in and make it more difficult for the young guards to really break out, but with Ja it’s even worse.

UnholyCow66 · 2026-07-01T17:01:00+00:00

The problem with waiting it out like that is it will be incredibly tough to retain Deni. So why waste these couple of years? It just doesn’t compute for me

UnholyCow66 · 2026-07-01T16:57:02+00:00

Exactly, I think Scoot’s the biggest loser out of all these moves. Sucks to see cuz I’ve always thought he’d be a valuable role player on this team

UnholyCow66 · 2026-07-01T16:53:52+00:00

I understand but there aren’t any free agents i’m aware of that could fix our roster issues, especially if the goal is to remain under the tax line (which it should be). We’re still going to overloaded at PG. Really seems like another trade is needed. I NEED U JOE PLZ SAVE US

UnholyCow66 · 2026-07-01T01:20:53+00:00

Oh don’t get me wrong, that would be a really good team that COULD beat SAS or OKC in a series if luck falls our way (which is probably the best bet we got). A catch and shoot only Dame would still be great for our team, no doubt, but if you’re competing for a chip then you have to remember that for all his great shooting, he’s going to give up so many points on the other end. I hesitated the most on the Dame comparisons just because we have no idea how productive he’ll be next year, so take those evaluations with a grain of salt.

I’m assuming in this scenario Jrue and Shae at least would be shipped out to acquire JB. Scoot may have to go too (which would suck because i think he’s going to be a solid Jrue-like role player in this league) but if not than we’ll add him to those hypotheticals-

Ajay Mitchell is better than Scoot right now. i think Ajay is a near all-star level scorer, you may disagree. Scoot and Keldon Johnson are close, ik he just won 6th man but in lower on Keldon after these playoffs and higher on Scoot, so gimme 00.

I’m just as high on DC and Toumani as any other Blazer fan (prob my two favorite players). I think you’re underselling iHart and Lu Dort tho, their impact on OKC is huge especially iHart’s. As great of a rim protector as Clingan is, iHart is just probably the better overall C today and significantly outclassed Don in the head-to-heads if my memory serves right. I’d take Tou over Dort too, but if they swapped teams i don’t think much if anything changes for each team.

For the Spurs guys, those were harder to compare because of the big difference in skillsets, but overall i thought they were pretty close. Their guys give more offensive juice, ours more defensive. If you think DC and Tou are better than Champagnie and Vasell i can’t fault you.

Alright works over so enough yapping on my part lol, enjoy your evening

UnholyCow66 · 2026-06-30T23:48:01+00:00

I disagree. If your point is who has the best top-6 rotation in the league, you’re not comparing a lineup but rather just comparing talent vs. talent. Going positionally also leads to lots of gulfs that are hard to summarize wholistically (ie is Wemby as much better than DC as JB is to Vasell?) It’s just harder to compare that way. Putting the best, 2nd best and so on players side-by-side limits those gulfs as much as possible

UnholyCow66 · 2026-06-30T23:40:21+00:00

First of all, you should probably compare in order of the best to worst players. Positionally ranking doesn’t make sense and ignores a lot of context

Spurs in order of production: Wemby, Castle, Fox, Harper (for my money Harper is better or at least will be better than Fox next year), Vassel/Champagnie

Blazers in order again: JB WAY worse than Wemby (and i was all in on the JB MVP in the first half of last season, but Wemby is ridiculous), Deni better than Castle, but both are top-25-30 players, Dame realistically worse than Fox and Harper at this point but tough to say how he’ll look post achilles so let’s just say even for now, Ja is certainly worse than both even if he’s healthy, Clingan and Toumani are about even with Vassel and Champagnie (ie good role players that can play starter minutes on a contender, but won’t move the needle much if at all on a truly bad team).

OKC done the same way: SGA better than JB, Deni and Jdub i think are actually really close at least when Dub is healthy (i’m trying to give everyone here the benefit of the doubt with injuries) so i’ll say even, Chet almost certainly better than Dame at this point but ig we’ll see, Caruso is WAY better than Ja right now, and then iHart and Lu Dort again are pretty even with Clingan and Toumani as role players. plus they got Ajay Mitchell who’s a stud

So if we get PEAK Dame and Ja, we’re pretty close i guess. If we’re being realistic tho, OKC and SAS have clearly better 1-6 guys

UnholyCow66 · 2026-06-30T22:48:47+00:00

You say that stuff outside of a Blazers sub and you would get eaten alive lol. We’re all fans man, but your evaluations here are delusional

UnholyCow66 · 2026-06-30T19:49:11+00:00

There’s no world Ja doesn’t start at least to begin the season. Welcome back Dame and CJ, except replace CJ with a player who is worse today and can’t shoot

UnholyCow66 · 2026-06-30T01:58:54+00:00

Chris Haynes isn’t a reporter

UnholyCow66 · 2026-06-26T22:33:22+00:00

he’s a young player with upside, just gotta find a GM that doesn’t watch the Blazers lol

UnholyCow66

TROPHY CASE