I think most of us know this, but my thoughts frequently turn to it during the highs and frustrating lows. This is from Joel Cronin’s interview on the Jacked Ramsays podcast the day before the first game of the season. Cronin, Dame, and Billups are all working through this process together.
Unless an amazing trade presents itself before the trade deadline, I expect a big move this summer. In the meantime, enjoy the wins, tolerate the losses, and hope for some fun highlights.
[Link and transcript](https://www.blazersedge.com/2022/10/22/23412241/joe-cronin-portland-trail-blazers-2022-23-interview-podcast-neil-olshey-damian-lillard-contract) edited– direct link, no longer AMP:
“You know, we’re trying to build, this isn’t a win-now roster as far as, we haven’t pushed in all of our chips yet. We weren’t signing players based on position over talent. We’ve been choosing talent over need, basically throughout this whole process.”
“We knew there’d be some positional redundancies and some positional holes and we’re OK working through that because we’re trying to build our talent base, trying to build this culture we’ve been talking about. And also we haven’t pushed all of our chips in as far as, we haven’t made a big move yet, like using future draft capital or anything like that.”
“And this comes with a lot of discussion with Damian about trust in where we’re heading and trust in what Chauncey and I are telling him. We are building, we do want to win, much sooner than later and to do so we’re going to have to develop some of these guys that are going to have to help us hopefully sooner than later. But there are certain 19-year-olds who won’t be ready until they’re 23, at which point, where are we?”
“I acknowledge that it’s reckless but I also think we’ve got to get some of these right before we can take that next step.”
“We knew there’d be some positional redundancies and some positional holes and we’re OK working through that because we’re trying to build our talent base, trying to build this culture we’ve been talking about. And also we haven’t pushed all of our chips in as far as, we haven’t made a big move yet, like using future draft capital or anything like that.”
“And this comes with a lot of discussion with Damian about trust in where we’re heading and trust in what Chauncey and I are telling him. We are building, we do want to win, much sooner than later and to do so we’re going to have to develop some of these guys that are going to have to help us hopefully sooner than later. But there are certain 19-year-olds who won’t be ready until they’re 23, at which point, where are we?”
“I acknowledge that it’s reckless but I also think we’ve got to get some of these right before we can take that next step.”
by ja-mez
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Someone’s gotta sticky this. I swear everyone acts surprised we aren’t contenders after a bad loss.
Lol don’t make excuses for him making bad trades and signings
And…. He gave Simons and Nurk huge contracts which holds us back reinforcing the squad
So the plan is to be good in four years? Lol
> Unless an amazing trade presents itself before the trade deadline, I expect a big move this summer.
Dame turns 33 this summer and will be approaching 34 by the 2024 playoffs. It’s all well and good to be patient but sometimes if you wait too long the window of opportunity will pass you by.
At least we can see dame time still has time. Dudes as good as ever. And I still really like our assets and roster better than the last couple years.
Dame is turning 33. I don’t give a shit what cronin told the fanbase to lose the “interim” tag on his job title. Good lord I didn’t realize this many grown adults just swallow whatever a dude in a polo shirt tells them.
You can’t “push in all your chips” under a hard cap.
You left out the portion where JC talked about exemptions.
POR used the MLE on GP2, and Bari.
If POR uses the TPMLE/BAE – Then next year POR will be hard capped as well – Except next year POR will be a tax team, with more money on the books, and more room under the tax+ team hard cap…
Or – Maybe POR makes moves at the TD that prevent the need to sign a TPMLE/BAE player, and POR as a tax team has no upper limit as a result.
Either way, you need that room to make an “all in” deal, and the current non-tax hard cap limits how much the franchise can “spend”, regardless.
Cronin: ’19 year old won’t be ready until he’s 23′
Sharpe: ‘hold my gatorade’