No current player on the Blazers roster will ever become better than Jaylen Brown.
Damian Lillard, during his prime, was as good as or better than Brown (better offensively, but weaker defensively. After Lillard, we must go back to Drexler to find a better player than Brown who wore the black and red.
The Blazers' last five first-round picks (Sharpe, Scoot, Murray, Clingan and Hansen) don’t add up to Brown.
Yet, heaven forbid the Blazers trade future picks to acquire a star in his prime to pair with Lillard (something the GM essentially promised to do 10 times).
Gotta keep that draft capital, right? But why should anyone believe that those future picks will net a player better than Brown? The past five didn’t and they included a No. 3 and two No. 7s.
Also, adding Brown’s $60 million salary would not have been a big deal, given that over the next two seasons, Deni and Dame will make a combined $26 million.
It’s like striking in the NFL when the franchise QB is on a rookie contract. Instead, the Blazers are destined to waste Deni’s years with his “amazing contract.”
Instead of going all in on Brown, the Blazers rolled the dice on a redundant, injury-prone and problematic player in Morant, who makes $43 million and doesn’t fit next to Dame.
The Blazers will scramble the next two years to reach the postseason and get rocked, then have to pay Deni $40 mill and another $40 mill to extend Morant should he right himself. And if he doesn’t, what was the point in bringing him in next to Dame rather than go after Brown?