As you should be...pretty good player for what's gonna be pick 25-30 in 3 years, barring Giannis falling off the face of the earth
I'm kind of interested how he'll do with Dame. He can be an offensive black hole, it got frustrating at times last year when Cade started playing better seeing him not get a touch for minutes on end when Grant decided to waste 15 seconds and then put up a shot
he'll be at best a #3 here so idk what'll happen. if he wants to get paid and thinks scoring 20 ppg is the way to do it, than we might have some trouble
isn't he on record saying he's only looking for the biggest bag possible or am I mixing him up with someone else?
I don't remember that but he did say he signed with Pistons because he didn't want to be a 3rd option somewhere. So that'll be interesting
Blazers Twitter will still bitch this wasn’t enough of a return for the CJ trade….I’m happy we still get to keep the 7 pick
I don't think the 3rd option thing is nearly as big a deal as people made it out to be. Grant wanted to prove he was capable of being more than a 3 and D guy, and he didn't think that would ever happen in Denver. In hindsight, it probably would have because Murray got hurt, but Detroit gave him an opportunity to prove he's capable of more. And because he did that, he's probably going to get extended with a 4/$112M by Portland as soon as this deal goes through while playing with a franchise player in Lillard who really likes him and wanted him. I think things worked out pretty well for Grant in the end.
basically anything that keeps dame around and the team competitive on a night-to-night basis i'm cool with at this point. they're not really going to compete in the west in the playoffs but if it makes it so that i can turn on a random game in january and not regret spending 2 hours watching it, that's fine with me
Detroit clearly valued cap space over current return, which I think is dumb but I guess we'll see what they do with the $$. I don't see how they're getting Ayton unless Phoenix is cool with just taking back Isaiah Stewart and something else, but Portland was the only realistic option where they could move him without taking salary back. The other nerd element of this deal is the Pistons' first round pick is tied up with OKC under various protections through 2027, which means before now the only first rounder they could deal until that conveys was in 2029. This gives them a future trade chip they might need down the road. It's not much, but I wonder if that's part of the reason they were fine with taking a future asset instead of a present one.
eh it kind of felt like dame tolerated cj doing that because they were close personally, they came into the league at basically the same time, and it was a necessary evil for that rotation to work over the years. when cj wasn't hitting shots, he was basically a net zero at best. it's been dame's team for 10 years or whatever, i doubt that will be an issue.
Grant is the kind of player Portland has needed for years. I think he does really well there. I think there's a lot of similarities between he and Wiggins offensively. It's not always going to be efficient, but it's incredibly valuable if you have someone that size who isn't afraid to get his own shot and can create something for himself. You need wings who can defend and score on their own if you want to win games that matter. Grant has proven he can do that at least some of the time. The biggest issue with Grant is that he doesn't rebound at all (which was one of the huge criticisms of Wiggins until this year). It's hard to be a good 4 if you don't rebound, and Portland already has two tiny guards who don't rebound. For him to be a valuable piece for Portland, I think he has to get better in that area like Wiggins did.
it will be nice to not be stuck in a situation where the offense just dies as soon as they stick some 6'8 guy on dame and bump him every time he gets to the basket, and cj isn't hitting contested shots. norm powell basically filled this role but he's much smaller than grant
i don't really pay attention to college basketball so the value of that pick means almost nothing to me but he's a good player and you might as well try one last big run with dame
it'd be one thing if og was on an expiring or something, but hes locked in for 3 years at less than $20m per there's like zero reason for them to make that move
twitter is making this sound like it's a klutch thing (billups, cronin the new gm, og, nurk) so that's bad for the league/sport but maybe good for portland
7 isn't enough for a player that good that young and on that good a contract and now you're making your offer worse
Good stuff from Portland. After this season I forgot how nice a competitive on a nightly basis team is