How Is The Trail Blazers Rebuild Viewed By The Rest Of The NBA? | Dirt & Sprague

How Is The Trail Blazers Rebuild Viewed By The Rest Of The NBA? | Dirt & Sprague

Let’s start here. We haven’t talked a lot about him in the last couple of days. I was surprised, but shouldn’t be surprised considering what you told me about what the reporter has said about this team, but I saw this. I was scrolling Twitter during one of the breaks earlier, and I didn’t realize this came out yesterday, and I’m like, “Hey, it connects back to our local institution.” Sure. Uh on ESPN.com on their NBA page, they currently have a ranking of This is Tim Bontemps, NBA writer for ESPN. That also be friend of the program. Friend of the program. had him on multiple times. Tim Bontemps. Yeah. And he did a ranking of the 14 teams in the NBA going through a rebuild currently. I imagine it’s probably the 14 lottery teams that he’s ranking. Yeah. That’s what we would consider, you know, rebuilding teams. Sure. So, he ranked them all just in terms of where they’re at, where the roster’s at, their future assets, the players under the age of 25, how they’re going about building it to try and get to the point of competing for a championship. 1 through 14. He ranked them. To the surprise of nobody, the San Antonio Spurs were number one. Duh. Yep. Dallas Mavericks just got Cooper flag. Yep. Duh. Number two. Totally get it. If I were to ask Brandon Spring, and I know you know the answer to this cuz we talked about it during a break. Of those 14 teams, where does Portland fall in your eyes? Um, well, cuz you’re not matching San Antonio and you’re not matching Dallas with Cooper flag. So, you’re talking my eyes doing if you were ranking these 14 teams. So, your teams are obviously those two. I mentioned Atlanta, um, you know, go through Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Toronto, Utah, Charlotte, New Orleans, all the teams, Phoenix, all the teams that weren’t in the playoffs. What? Okay, so I hate asking so many qualifiers. Are we talking like what’s the window here? 10 years, 5 years, are we talking next year? How you’re going about building to win a championship in any way, shape, or form. And I think the three main criteria that he’s counting are players under the age of 25 on your roster, tradable future first round picks, and players on rookie scale contracts. So basically guys that are on cheap contracts, the number of assets you have to play with, and the number of young players that you have on your roster. I would say somewhere in that six to nine range. Six to nine range. Yeah. Nice. I like some things that they’re doing. I totally see the vision of other parts. I have questions and I wouldn’t say concerns cuz the money doesn’t involve me, but like I understand that Drew and Dame are happy to play together. There is a thirdyear point guard wedged in between them there that they’re either going to have to admit publicly we made the worst pick because of the top four picks. So far he’s the worst one even though Miller got hurt last year. Yeah. Uh and then like the pooing of just no big deal our seventh pick from a couple years ago. It might not be very good or or physical or you know a leader in any way. It’s okay. I we might be bringing him off the bench all year this year depending on how it’s going to look. The one thing I don’t agree with with people is the idea that your seventh pick and your third pick that you thought were the staples are just not good and you’re going to have to move on. No problem. I have a problem with that. Like that’s not I can like some of their moves and I can also point out that like the fact that you missed on both those picks that matters and you can try to buy your way out of it, but I don’t know if buying 36-year-old Dame off an Achilles and 37year-old Drew Holiday making $37 million in a couple years is is going to buy you out of it. So I like some of their moves. I like the upside of Donovan. Yang looked really enticing. We’ll see what that is in the regular season. Obviously, Tummani and Denny uh after that there’s some kind of puzzling moves to me. I’m willing to let them play it out and find out. But yeah, somewhere in that six to9 range, I would put it of the 14 teams. I think that’s more than fair. I will tell you, I think one of my favorite traditions on the Blazers here in the last oh, I don’t know, year and a half, two years, I I get labeled a negative Nancy when it comes to Portland Trailblazer basketball. I’m the Debbie Downer of the Blazers on this show. Yeah. And I love when people take my negative takes and call me an idiot or claim that I don’t know what I’m talking about and then I read or hear things from national voices that just reiterate everything that I say. I can’t tell you the number of times we’ve had Ben Oliver on the show and he’s like repeating the same exact stuff I’m saying about roster construction. Why is this guy here? Why is this guy playing? Conspiracies of moves what it means and I’m like wait a minute I’m an idiot but he’s a national voice and he’s a genius so he knows what he’s talking about but I don’t. So, let me read the the writing here from Bontemps and I’ll tell you where he has them ranked to the 14 teams. I almost nailed it on my guest because I didn’t see the article before you did. Where do you think he has them? I’ve heard Tim Bontemps a couple times this year talk about the Blazers. So, I had a rough idea of where he was going to be. Here is what he wrote. The strategy for a few years now, quote, “The Blazers have had have felt like a team trying to execute multiple strategies at once under general manager Joe Cronin. Who could have possibly argued that?” Interesting. The team has drafted a series of young players high in the lottery. Scoot, shade, and clinging, and yet has had all of them repeatedly blocked by older veterans for playing time. Does anybody argue that? I wonder. Okay, we get it. Okay, sorry. I’ll stop doing over here. Do you believe now? This off season, Portland traded for Drew Holiday, now in his mid30s and for the second straight year used a first round pick on a center, Yon Hansen. An intriguing player who will need time to grow his game. This is also a roster brushing up against the luxury tax. while plans on building on last season’s strong second half. Portland was over 500, have one of the league’s better defenses. Time will tell if it’s a solid play against a soft schedule or signs of true growth. He continues Portland welcome back Damen Lillard on Thursday, signing into a three-ear $42 million contract. His return gives Blazers gives the Blazers leadership presence in their next generation that is developing. Sharp and Henderson are intriguing talents who require more consistency to take that sort of leap. Klingan can be a menace defensively, but selecting Hansen this year leads to questions about his future, too. Two and Denny have been quite good on below market deals could earn big deals in the coming seasons, removing some of their surplus value. Portland is clearly operating like a team that believes it can get into the top 10 in the Western Conference this season, evidenced by the holiday deal. The path to chasing a top four seat, however, is years away. And Tim Bontemps of the 14 teams rebuilding currently in the NBA has the Blazers ranked 10th. The only team that he has behind them disagree with some of these teams he has above them. Okay, we’ll go through them. So, the teams behind Portland are Chicago, Sacramento, New Orleans, and Phoenix. Phoenix has no future first round pick. So, that’s they’re a dead last there. I Yeah, can I push back a little bit? I don’t want to defend Phoenix cuz what the hell are they doing? Yeah, fair. Devin Booker. I mean, a pretty good player. Better than anybody on our roster. It’s a nice start point. Devin Booker be easily the best player of Would we take him on our team? Yeah. Would he start over Shaden Sharp? Yep. Anybody? Okay. Name them over. Uh the number nine team slightly one pick ahead of us or one team ahead of us. Toronto. It’s number nine. Yeah, I’m 11 players under 25. Four future tradable first round picks and six players on a rookie scale contract. Toronto has been now for two years a team. I’m like why are they not better? And I don’t know if that’s just coaching cuz I like I look at the roster. I’m like I think I like some of these guys. Weird team. Who is the Raptors coach now? Uh it’s uh cuz they fired what’s his nuts, right? Isn’t he in Philly? Where did Nurse go? Who won the title? Yeah, he’s in Philly. He’s in Philly. Uh God, isn’t it a Euro? Yeah, it’s Darko. Oh, that’s right. The year I don’t know how to say his last name. Sure. Uh eight is the Brooklyn Nets. Disagree with this. 12 players under 25, nine tradable future first round picks and seven players on a rookie scale contract. You know, if if if Demen ends up being a a stud, cool, man. But you can’t just tout the age of people and that’s you know I know there’s other factors here but they’ve always been the yeah Brooklyn’s got money and then they get nobody and even when they got people it did it blew up in their faces KD Kyrie and James Harden I I am not touting their underage of 25 group what what on that roster makes you excited I couldn’t I don’t know if I can they used five of their first round draft picks that was like NBA history they did so I I’m going to push back on Brooklyn. I don’t know if Brooklyn knows what they’re doing. Can we play the fun game of how many Brooklyn Nets can Jason Swagard name? No. He shakes his head. No, that’s okay. But that’s kind of the point, right? But that sums up the point. The Utah Jazz are seven. I’m going to push back here. I look, I’m going to Old takes expose myself on this. They’re clearly going for Debansa. They got Danny A, man. Ace Bailey, baby. Yeah, man. Once upon a time, the Danny A thing like meant a little more for me. Carried some weight. his son’s running it, not him. Um, they’re going to be bad and I think they want to be bad again. So, like, okay, good luck. Maybe that will pay off and they will get Deansa and that will change their favor, their fortune. But I’ve looked at Utah going, I don’t I don’t know it get it at all. I have no idea what they’re doing. Li Markin’s probably going to get traded. If if he’s not, then okay, he’s going to be there by himself. Walker Kesler, people tout that. Okay, he’s a good player, but all right. Man, I just I have no idea what Utah’s doing. How about the next superpower of the NBA coming in at number six after the drafting of Khan Canipple, the Charlotte, I actually I agree with it. I like Charlotte. I I know Charlotte’s not to be trusted. They have I look at Charlotte and I say, why can’t they be a version of the Pistons? I don’t know if they have a Kate Cunningham for sure, but I I thought Khan had a really good summer. Um I just I don’t know. I kind of like the way they’re going. They’re operating on let’s just throw some darts at wings and see if it works. Get some athletic cats and see where it goes. Washington’s very similar to this to me, too. Like Washington is number five. They just have parts that you go, I’d like that. I wouldn’t mind having that. That’s a good little player. Like, hey, why don’t the Wiz I had somebody go, why don’t the Wizards just trade us Cory Kiss? I’m like, if you’re the Wizards, why wouldn’t you not want Cory Kiss? Yeah, I don’t care who they drafted. Uh, your top four then is Philadelphia 4, Atlanta 3, and then I mentioned the top two are Dallas and San Antonio. So it seems like you would have had Portland ahead of I mean not a huge difference not a big jump a couple of teams though Utah Brooklyn maybe Toronto debatable right so a couple of spots there I did find it interesting I just you know I they’ve been in the news a lot lately because of the Damian Lillard signing he did another press availability yesterday was camp I think yeah and he was joking about the Drew Holiday Wi-Fi thing where he moved into Drew Holiday’s house when he got traded to Brooklyn and then there was video of him talking to Holiday before a game when they were in Milwaukee and Boston and complaining to him about how bad the Wi-Fi was at his house in Milwaukee and Drew was telling him how to fix the Wi-Fi. There’s little funny anecdotes like that. It’s very cool to see Dame back in a in a Blazer uniform or back in the city representing the organization. There are still massive questions that exist about where do they go from here. It’s a pivotal year for them, man, for some of their young guys. And um I did I found it interesting. Bond times had him 10th out of 14. He hates them. He’s not a big fan of what they’re doing right now. He doesn’t really hate them, but like when I’ve heard him talk about him, there’s also some contempt in his voice. Like, why? Why? Why are you doing this? Almost more than like that. He’s just like, I don’t get what they’re doing. I think it’s stupid. Backto-back guards of top 10 picks, then keep Anthony Simons. Does that make a lot of sense? Clearly the Blazers didn’t cuz they just traded him. Some good things. There’s some things to be, you know, optimistic about. There’s other things that it’s very fair to say. I don’t I don’t see it. I think we’ll have to wait and see. We’ll have to get Bon Temps on the show at some point in the offseason. It’d be a good game. This is summertime for a lot of guys. They get to vacation. When we get closer to the season, I absolutely am going to reach out to see if he can hop on. So, the rebuild is 10th according to uh ESPN’s Tim Bond temps.

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