Highly recommend giving it a listen. The guys at Five on the Floor have a youtube channel host that lays the whole Dame situation. Not sure what is true and what isn’t, but paints the picture of a pretty sneaky FO.
Some interesting tidbits:
-The Dame extension had a lot more promised than has been circulated. Dame was willing to walk and use having one year left to force a trade. Promises from ownership/Management/Billups etc were that they were competing.
-Before the extension Dame’s camp talked trade clause but promises were that with his past history with the Blazers, he effectively had a no trade clause. They said if he wanted out they would do him right.
-At one point, Dame had effectively recruited Jaylen Brown. Celtics would take the third pick and maybe Ant giving the Celtics more cap room plus extending any Tatum window. Brown was willing to use his one year left as leverage to get to Portland. Cronin said he would look into it but never reached out and tried to get the ball rolling.
-“when they got Scoot, there’s no way they could move him”. The possibility of Scoot being available was discussed. Cronin told Dame that other than Wemby, they would move whoever they were in position to get to build now. Dame agreed that if they somehow got the first pick and Wemby, they should keep him.
-that last meeting, Dame was starting to realize he could trust Cronin’s claim of trying to build a winner around Dame. Cronin made promises but Dame was starting to doubt. Dame asked Cronin to stop floating this idea to the media they were all in on Dame while doing the opposite. Cronin convinced Dame to give him one week to work stuff out. Of course, an hour after that meeting Cronin released that all was good and they were still committed to building around Dame. Dame lost all trust in Cronin at that point. Waited a week and even the first day, and said he wanted out
-Dame gave Cronin a list. Cronin told Dame he was looking around at those destinations to get a trade done. Dame had his agent call the teams and they said they never heard from the Blazers
-Dame has gone from being in contact daily with the FO to zero contact.
-interesting over view, the FO has played the PR game and made Dame the bad guy in the court of public opinion.
5 comments
I believe the words you’re looking for are Dame bad, Heat fan bad, and running from the grind
Idk how credible any of this is.
But if this is true it wouldnt suprise me in the least.
From Dame’s sudden trade request to ONLY the Heat after the Blazers did jackshit with the pick, to Cronin’s press conference saying ” I understand why Dame feels that way”, and Dame’s tweets telling people they dont understand shit about the situation.
It was clear as day that there was a betraya of sorts that had not been fully explained for one reason or another, and that eventually it will come out.
Only r/nba was not seeing it that way, and it doesnt surprise me at all given their hate boner for the Heat.
At this point it doesn’t matter what led up to this both Dame and the blazers were fooling themselves even trying to compete in the west. Like the nuggets and warriors and Lakers and the kings and the sun’s and even okc didn’t exist .Dame was just unfortunate to be drafted in the wrong market and city .There is no way Devin booker was put in a better position to win a ring before Dame.
The Celtics part of this is absolutely bonkers. If I’m reading this right, they thought they had Tatum for Ant + Scoop (probably more picks too) but had Tatum actively tampering with Brown to turnaround and stick it to Boston?
Dude was kinda making up his own logic about the situation between Blazers and Dame like he was in the room lol