u/melikesreddit

I think something like Dame to Brooklyn for Claxton + Simmons + 4 FRPs would make all parties happy enough. There's always a chance that Simmons returns to form we'd need to take on a big contract anyway to match salary if we're targeting picks and young players. Dame gets to play with Mikal in a desirable free agent destination and the team is by no means gutted, just weak at C. Portland gets the guilt free opportunity to move on.

This wouldn’t happen. Miami can’t offer even close to the best package for Dame, so if we were interested in trading with them it would be an act of goodwill on our part to do our best by Dame before we move on into a new era. In that case asking for Bam back would defeat the purpose. If we were looking for strictly the best return we’d trade with a team like Orlando but we don’t want to send Dame to a bad team after all he’s done for the franchise. I like Brooklyn best as a trading partner, Miami would only work if a third team values Herro highly enough to part with multiple FRPs.

Nets can offer a way better package than NYK, and his good friend is on the roster already. If Portland trades Dame it won’t be for an established star it would be for a shit ton of draft picks and promising young players.

If we agree to trade Dame to Miami there’d be an element of goodwill there on our part, so requiring Jimmy or Bam as part of the return would be defeat the purpose of sending him to a team that’d be great right away. It would probably be a 3 team trade where we spin Herro for picks or a young front-court player or something because he’s redundant on our roster.

Portland fans know just as well, it sucks watching the Lakers get bailed out by free agents year after year while we have to rely on insanely lucky drafting.

There’s no reason for Portland to make this trade then, and they won’t

I really can’t see a Dame to Brooklyn trade that doesn’t include Claxton, he fits Portland’s timeline perfectly and fills a position of need unlike Cam or Dinwiddie. Every team’s fan base wants to fleece the other so unrealistic trades will be the most upvoted, but the only somewhat realistic option without Mikal is something like Simmons + Claxton + 4 FPRs.

Dame is not injury prone by any measure, he had an elective surgery to repair an abdominal issue that he’d been playing with for 5 years while averaging like 28ppg because Portland was tanking. This is the first significant time off he’s ever taken, and after coming back he had the best season of his career with no lingering concerns.

Mikal would be the best player Dame has played with since LaMarcus Aldridge 10 years ago, it has literally been that bad in Portland. Dame has dragged teams that would be in the 20-30 win range to the playoffs in the west year after year, plugging him into any team that’s playoff caliber without him make them contenders.

It’d be something like Simmons + Claxton + several FRPs, not sure what Brooklyn would do to replace Claxton but we have this Bosnian guy they could maybe take too

Those firsts are going to be late rounders, which I just can’t see us trading away our franchise GOAT for.

How do such guarantees work? Like beyond a verbal promise

Really? That surprises me. I think PG would be a perfect fit for us and we’d have to just roll the dice with his injury concerns. Shaedon is a Dame/PG hybrid so learning under both of them would be insane for him.

Would Portland be happy with the returned you proposed?

Probably not, and I don’t think anyone in Portland is really suggesting trading with Houston. The reason it came to mind is we’re in a tough spot where if we do trade Dame we want to trade him somewhere where he can be competitive just out of respect, so bottom feeders like Orlando or Detroit aren’t good options. Hearing that Harden was likely to return to Houston made me think your FO would be looking to maximize his timeline, making Houston the only team with young talent and draft assets that also has the potential to actually be good in the short term. Harden would be the best player Dame’s ever played with by a mile and we’d get a bunch of promising 20 year olds.

Yeah that makes sense. My thinking was that with the Harden to Houston rumors going around the FO must at least be considering putting together an immediately competitive roster otherwise bringing James back makes no sense does it? Maybe those rumors are exaggerated. I don’t see how Harden + a legitimate all-nba player is worse than Harden + a bunch of <23 year olds unless he’s fine with just mentoring the young players for the remainder of his career.

Fair enough! It's hard to know how other teams value their young players. How do Rockets fans feel about the prospect of Harden returning?

I can’t believe people think an NBA general manager would be so incompetent to trade the literal MVP without receiving AT LEAST Damian Lillard back. This is a pipe dream, if not Dame it would take Sharpe/Ant/#3 and every tradeable pick we have and they’d still probably say no.

That's why we have someone less reactionary in the GM spot :D If we can get him we 100% should get him

Agreed. I know it’s heresy but I think we should trade Dame to Houston, a team has a good chance of landing Harden this offseason who will be looking to compete with the same age related urgency Dame is. This solves a number of problems, if we do trade Dame we we need to trade him to a team where he has the chance to play with other top players and be competitive so we can’t dump him off in Orlando, and we need to build out our young core so the trading partner needs valuable assets. Trading Dame to Houston (contingent on Harden actually wanting to go there) could net a major haul like the 4th pick this year, the 20th pick this year, a promising 20 year old center in Şengün, a replacement PG/SG like Kevin Porter Jr and some other draft compensation.

Dame is my favorite player of all time, but from a team perspective I’d rather have the 3rd and 4th pick in this draft + Şengün and some other pieces than waste the rest of Dame’s career on a middling Portland team and hamstringing our future. We’d improve our position and give him a chance to play with an All-NBA tier player for the first time in his career in a more attractive FA destination.

Dude no they absolutely DO NOT. Do you go to other cities? I’ve gone all over North America since 2020 and the only cities that come even close to Portland are San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Vancouver, and other smaller west coast cities. Go visit Boston, Toronto, DC, Miami, Minneapolis, Chicago. It’s not even remotely close. I love Portland with all my heart but I’m not about this gaslighting shit.

This is the most annoying part. People here are almost religiously committed to certain ideas and so quick to demonize others as being a fascist or right wing or whatever else. For example, I don’t believe that our “harm reduction” strategies (they must have the same PR people that the Patriot Act had) have actually reduced the harm that addicts experience. This seems fairly obvious to me as I watch us break overdose death records and I clean up camps full of fentanyl foil and needles in county supplied tents. Despite this obvious reality so many people religiously cling to these failed ideas and call you a Fox Viewer for criticizing them. I just wish we could be a normal liberal city like Boston or DC and drop all this weirdo shit where we gaslight everybody to protect the Portland religious orthodoxy.

This only makes sense if we trade Dame, and if we do that Grant is gone too which means at least 2 more years of tanking

The last one is so sweet 🥹

There’s a ton of empty housing out there that’s just sitting fallow because it’s more profitable fir it to sit

Absolutely 100% untrue. Harmful conspiracy theories like these worsen the housing crisis and we really need to get our shit together with these discussion because things are only getting worse.

You actually know this person?