Portland dodges a bullet as Daryl Morey joins Sixers
A great GM thankfully went to another team
As a wise man, not James Wiseman, once said, it’s great to have a leader of basketball operations who doesn’t make aggressive trades while thinking of their best player first and their owner’s luxury tax considerations second. As the NBA offseason moved along, the Philadelphia 76ers added a man that Blazers state media has already declared persona non-grata.
Now the Blazer front office should be free to conduct their draft process while seeing the Rockets lose the forefather of NBA front office conduct and the godfather of 1/3 of the league. Of course, such a fantastical reality as the Blazers having Morey would have been terrible.
So while the Blazers are holding workouts nobody knows about, including interviews with players they believe they’ll be able to get with the No. 16 pick in the 2020 Draft, which is supposed to be deep on role players, Portland has a lot of things to celebrate now that they don’t have to worry about Daryl Morey being in charge of the team.
Aggressive trades are bad, actually. No need to worry about those anymore. Trying to maximize the timeline of a superstar in favor of constantly living on multiple timelines is great! (Internal monologue: Please kill me.)
Damian Lillard is going to be great forever and ever. He’s also going to want to play for the Blazers when he gives it his all and you don’t ever give it your all. That’s how these things work. Just let him be the greatest player the franchise has ever seen and refuse to do something different. It always lasts forever.
Have you noticed that outside of Gary Trent, the Blazers have no wings that are guaranteed to come back next season? Carmelo Anthony is the subject of doubts when it comes to him coming back, even though he’s indicated every intention that he will come back (while also recently discussing his time back to his time in Houston where he was ready to come off the bench). Trevor Ariza has a contract that is semi-tradeable and there are rumors from folks such as Zach Lowe about Portland being a sneaky destination for Gordon Hayward, but all of that seems like a hydroponic dream until we are proven otherwise. Or else, we are gonna see Dame, CJ, and Nurk run it back with a squad that will once again have to learn on the run when the rest of the West can fall back on what it’s like to win four out of seven games at the highest level.
I hope you were able to find the satire in this column.