2021 nba offseason draft free agency etc

a simple solution to all this would be "not hiring chauncey billups"

yes. I was pleasantly surprised that the mostly worthless sports-columnist-troll for the Oregonian, John Canzano, threw down the gantlet at once over Billups, the moment Shams broke the story. Good on him. Maybe Olshey can back out of this one without falling out a window in the process.

welp

Clippers assistant Chauncey Billups has reached agreement on a five-year deal to become the new coach of the Portland Trail Blazers, sources tell ESPN.

— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) June 28, 2021

str8 bullshit

five years! get your buds paid before your ass is dropped I guess. very grody all around

There’s only so many teams left that are both trying to contend and haven’t traded away all their draft assets

― Matt Armstrong, Sunday, June 27, 2021 5:51 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Philadelphia has entered the chatroom.

honest question, be kind to me - has this info about chauncey been out in the public sphere consistently? is it a component of his public reputation prior to the past couple weeks? it kinda blows my mind that he's been a prominent nba personality for the past 2 decades, and this story is just really registering with me now. i don't remember any shade at all when he was leading a Pistons team regarded for its character, won finals mvp, got hired and was again highly regarded as an analyst, etc. Not at all saying that the Blazers should just ignore this stuff in his history, and there are cases to be made to nix it both based on the desire and convinction to reverse the Jail Blazers rep, and on the #metoo context, changing times. To say nothing of just What Is the Right Thing to Do, morally. But, on a certain level it feels a little bit like a gotcha on the Blazers, like we've been cool with this dude and papering over his past for 20 years, so why would they think this would be different.

its not been common knowledge, i think it became a bigger deal via blazers fans online bringing it up while theyve been looking at hc candidates

thx bise. i think i'm also trying to reconcile this info with the fact that i have always liked him. fighting off the part of me that wants to make excuses about an nba rookie being caught up in the life and all. hard to know whether or not it's abominable to make excuses for him without knowing more about what happened, but there's enough out there for me to know it would be nagl to defend him

i wonder if he and the blazers have plans to address this, would certainly be interested in what they have to say

i always liked him too fwiw, and a couple weeks ago was the first i heard about all this, dont recall it being in the news at the time when he was with the celtics, obvs a long time ago tho

same, first time i've heard of it was when he got brought up as a potential celtics coach

my tendency is def to disengage with cases of celebrity harm causing cause theres just so much harm in society at large that im just like let the celebrities deal with the fallout from their own shit i ultimately dont really care about them i would like to relax and watch thunderous dunks, which is not to say that these cases arent important for society at large as examples and so forth, just that i have low enthusiasm for litigating them myself, its all so depressing

i hear that, i feel very out of my normal m.o. bringing it up

plus there's presumably no shortage of potentially good nba coaches out there (though unearthing them is another matter)

yeah i feel like theres all sort of opportunities for repairing harm forgiveness etc, obvs they have to actually do that, but it still doesnt mean its good for them to become a head coach or a senator or whatever, it send a pretty callous message to the countless people who have been harmed by similar behaviors

I think that the saintly place Kobe has in the NBA is a part of this

chauncey was also close to being hired as GM of the cavs several years back and none of this ever came up.

this reminds me a lot of when greg schiano got hired to be tennessee football coach and fans who didn’t like the hire bcuz they thought the should be getting a better coach concocted a campaign to overturn the hire based on schiano having an alleged role in covering for jerry sandusky. the billups accusations seem more damning — or are at least directly accusing him of a crime — but one does get the sense that the accusations are being weaponized bcuz the fans just want a different coach. i don’t pity chauncey bcuz nobody deserves a job as an NBA coach but it does feel like there’s a sort of proxy war being waged here. dame being thrown in the middle of it is kind of a tip of the hand to me, the fanbase thinks the process has been illegitimately led by a player so they pressed the big red button they thought would blow up the hire. of course, the blazers risking the goodwill of their franchise and possibly lillard’s status on the team to hire chauncey billups as coach is, even if all of the above is true, the craziest thing of all.

Matt Armstrong
Posted: June 28, 2021 at 12:19:33 PM
I think that the saintly place Kobe has in the NBA is a part of this

yeah was thinking about this too, and aside from the rape accusation he was just such a blatant psycho and has been canonized for it

but one does get the sense that the accusations are being weaponized bcuz the fans just want a different coach.

i dont get this impression at all??

The scant details made public are damning enough to establish that a fairly brutal rape occurred and that billups was present. Beyond his undoubted presence at the scene, it is not clear exactly what his role was.

There is a widespread expectation that the Warriors will use the No. 7 pick and James Wiseman to immediately upgrade the roster, @johnhollinger writes.

One name to watch: Pascal Siakam.

More: https://t.co/nn68CLMvCi pic.twitter.com/FPjeLkGKin

— The Athletic (@TheAthletic) June 28, 2021

don't hate that for either team

Yeah a trade that makes sense

that seems fine, make it happen

trades must occur

warriors should prob trade wiseman before its too late, having him and draymond on the same team makes no sense

well, they might need to trade draymond to make that money work.

theyd have to send wiggins over

siakam was bad last year. wiggins was pretty good! wiggins is a better shooter and warriors need shooting. and his defense was actually really solid. siakim is a year older and hasnt been the same since his shoulder injury. contracts are exactly the same money but siakim has one more year on the deal. idk about this one

raptors would do that in a heartbeat i would think

siakam is a better player, i should say this while i still can.

lol

i feel like that trade would make sense for both sides. the ceiling on siakam is higher than wiggins and the warriors should probably be pushing for it. it's possible they could be selling high on wiseman + 7th pick also, there's a legitimate chance that neither of those players produce much value in the end. if the warriors didn't wanna give up wiggins or the raptors didn't want him they could sign and trade oubre, wiseman's cap number is actually pretty high you only need an extra $20 million to equal siakam

the recent history of 7th overall picks: killian hayes, coby white, wendell carter jr, lauri markannen, jamal murray, emmanuel mudiay, julius randle, ben mclemore, harrison barnes, bismack biyombo, greg monroe. seems like it might be a good one for the warriors to cash in

they absolutely should. if that partic deal happens i just hope siakams shoulder is good.

yeah warriors trying to thread some win now win later needle might be too much

I'll take Wiggins and Wiseman and the 7th over Siakam

nate duncan & hollinger talked about this recently on one of their podcasts, and nate (who i don't always agree with) made a pretty compelling case for why the warriors need to trade wiseman. the idea that he's going to lead the franchise post-splash bros seems pretty farcical, esp given that his development will be stunted to some degree given the warriors current ambitions. it's pretty hard for a big to be the pillar of a franchise in today's NBA unless you're embiid or jokic, basically, and wiseman doesn't seem to have that level of talent in a number of different ways. so what needle are you even threading, exactly?

siakam was scoring crunch time playoff baskets for the team that won it all a couple years ago! hes really good, warriors fans are attached to andrew wiggins now tho i guess...

the big knock on siakam health aside is hes not really a #1 scoring option but thats not an issue on the warriors great opportunity to buy low on a guy who everyone was wild about a minute ago

keeping wiggins as well via s&t oubre or whatever wld be better fwiw if the dubs are willing to pay the tax bill

his driving to the basket game could look really good on the warriors

yeah there's the opportunity cost question of whether you could get an even better player for that package but i think the warriors would have to feel pretty great about that trade.

his driving to the basket game could look really good on the warriors

― call all destroyer, Monday, June 28, 2021 11:51 AM (sixteen seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah this plus his passing is much better than wiggins

keeping wiggins as well via s&t oubre or whatever wld be better fwiw if the dubs are willing to pay the tax bill

― lag∞n, Monday, June 28, 2021 11:51 AM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yah the oubre sign in trade would be ideal. but do the raptors want oubre?

maybe if its a short deal just to make the contracts match

yah but oubre wants something longterm. only been doing short term deals thus far.

if you gave oubre 3/60 it would be slightly less money total than the two years left on wiggins deal ($64m) just spread out over an extra year. maybe they'd think that has more trade value if oubre has a better season. sign and trade hard caps you for a year but if they were rebuilding it prob wouldn't matter

the recent history of 7th overall picks: killian hayes, coby white, wendell carter jr, lauri markannen, jamal murray, emmanuel mudiay, julius randle, ben mclemore, harrison barnes, bismack biyombo, greg monroe. seems like it might be a good one for the warriors to cash in