*** OFFICIAL *** NBA 2020-21 Thread

[gut]

Trent Jr. was a stud in the bubble and showed lots of promise with increased minutes in McCollum absence. Also has some dog in him which Portland lacks aside from Dame. I'll miss him for sure, and think it was a savvy move from Masai as he falls more in line with the timeline of their core and will cost less than Norm Powell. Like.it better for Toronto.

Powell is a good player and a short term upgrade for a team that has next to no chance at making the finals, which I'm only qualifying because they already made a WCF with the same core and because Dame is God.

Blazers should have flipped CJ McCollum a year or two ago to improve defensively and fired their coach. Stotts is the second longest tenured coach (behind Pop) despite consistently having bad defensive teams, currently 29th.

Smart teams make moves like this, but Portland is a small market with the best player in franchise history in his prime. No time for a rebuild now. I'm fine watching a good to really good team through Lillard's prime.

I’m not surprised he has a lot of dog in him. I was at Ohio State when his dad was playing in high school and then later he was a beast at Ohio University. He was a first rounder. He was way bigger than Jr. His dad is like 4 years younger than me

I recall reading a story about how he ended up at OU, and OSU missed him, and he said his mom was a crackhead who would drive him to the corner to sell crack before school and pick him up. He had a bunch of academic issues and Ohio State probably just took a pass or thought he was trouble and missed out. So not shocking his son would have a little edge.

I didn’t know if he’d be much cheaper. Powell has another year at like $11 million before he gets paid big, so Blazers have a chance to see how he works out . I read Jr turned down 4/53, plus he’s a Klutch client, so I assumed someone would give him 4/80 next year.

Powell has a player option, which assuming he keeps his numbers up, he almost certainly won't exercise. So basically an expiring. I'm pretty "meh" on the deal. I would have much preferred to get Gordon. Powell is just a more experienced and polished Trent. Hood is just salary filler at this point, his torn achilles sapped him of all usefulness, so no loss there. Team is better with Simons or Little getting Hood's minutes.

As was said, the west is just once again SOOO deep with talent. Once the Blazers are fully healthy, the only other fully healthy squad that really scares me is the Lakers. At the same time, I would not be surprised to lose to any of the other teams in the first round either. There's 7 pretty damn good teams, almost everyone will be tested right away come playoff time. Everyone talking about the Miami and Boston moves to help their playoff runs, those teams would be 11th and 12th in the west LOL.

Random fun facts about today:

I thought you might mention this BCR, but today is the second time that Portland has traded a Gary Trent to Toronto. Senior was part of the Damon Stoudamire trade.

Every player in the NBA named "Gary" was traded today.