The Trail Blazers are hoping to maximize the rest of 30-year-old All-Star point guard Damian Lillard‘s prime years, writes Jake Fischer of Bleacher Report.
Fischer notes that team president Neil Oshley consulted with Lillard during the offseason to discuss good wing fits. Aaron Gordon, recently traded to another West contender in the Nuggets, was considered, though the team ultimately opted to trade for the cheaper Robert Covington. New addition Norman Powell may become tough to retain in restricted free agency, notes Fischer, who wonders if keeping Powell means the club may be willing to move CJ McCollum.
There’s more out of the Northwest Division:
- Work visa issues may delay the arrival of new Thunder forward Gabriel Deck to Oklahoma City, head coach Mark Daigneault has indicated, as Joe Mussatto of the Oklahoman tweets.
- Michael Rand of the Star Tribune wonders if the impending sale of the Timberwolves to ex-MLB All-Star Alex Rodriguez and entrepreneur Marc Lore could put the pressure on president of basketball operations Gersson Rosas to expedite a winning culture. Minnesota has made just one playoff appearance since its Western Conference Finals berth in 2004.
- The Jazz, current owners of the top seed in the Western Conference, are striving to balance resting their core players without losing their competitive edge, writes Tony Jones of The Athletic. “When we have guys out, we are going to have to have some other guys be really aggressive, and we are going to have to run as much as we can,” head coach Quin Snyder noted. The team has been more liberal in resting players with All-Star guard Donovan Mitchell absent due to a low-ankle sprain.
Wolves won’t have winning culture before sale unless they hire Sam Hinkie
In other words, the key to success is to get one of top 3 picks
No picks, no winning
Why would they hire Hinkie? And how on earth would Hinkie bring a winning culture? He basically pioneered losing culture. Lmao
The wannabe GM here thinks that Hinkie was the greatest ever.
Hinkie did bring a winning culture. He was the one who knew Embiid would be good. He saved the Sixers from a lot of owed picks to other teams then built up a lot of picks that helped build the team today.
The only reason he wasn’t around for the success is that Adam Silver and the league hated the open tanking where a team actually admitted what they were doing. Silver pushed hard for Harris to hire Jerry Colangelo as an advisor. It’s been documented how practically from the start he was sabotaging Hinkie’s job to get his son the job. There is a reason why Hinkie refuses to return to any front office. Teams refuse to let him do what is needed and he hated what happened to him.
I would not say Hinkle established a winning culture; he just cheated by tanking in assembling a mixed bag of talent with a sync problem. Hitting on 2 of 6 top ten picks is not sharp. Embiid and Simmons but also NNoel, JOkafor, EPeyton, MCWilliams, all backups. Trading was complicated but does not grade as a positive.
Bas.Ref. Hinkle page link to basketball-reference.com
Team went from 34-48 2013 to 10-72 2016. They were winning two years later, who knows if Hinkie stayed. I think Silver was slow to act against him since the tanking was clear early on (even though Hinkie denied it) and went on famously for several years. It’s like, he kept missing in the draft, so had to keep tanking.
Hinkle took advantage of, and made a laughingstock of, the NBA and traditionalists who set up rules in the best faith possible. Some call this clever… but to expect anyone outside of Philly to agree is bizarre.
Now he feels the pressure for a winning culture. Not the last 4yrs. And why now when they need that top 3 pick. TWolves will change name to PEDWolves.
Agree with the sentiment but I don’t get the Pedwolves joke.
Kind of agree with modded Foxtrot too but I doubt the sentiment matches the reality on the ground. Minneapolis as a city works at being liberal & inclusive more than most… but that can also cause backlash. Anyway it’s not a good environment for the NBA and I doubt NBA fans will get too upset if ARod moves the team though it would be another year at least if so.
About that local paper link… there is much talk of the team maybe moving and that article is the sports columnist taking his turn.
Basically it will be tough sledding for either side. Taylor said language is included to keep the team in MIN but courts could decide not to enforce that in time.
ABC decided to air on their 30for 30, an old ep about the Oakland Raiders moving around Cali. despite opposition from the commissioner.
Thing is it may not be Seattle OR Vegas. Posters speculate Austin Texas. They could just move to Des Moines and fans can travel a little more. Either way a new team would be the only pros and be darlings.
link to startribune.com
Austin, Texas? Not sure how that makes any sense.