Miami Heat: Joe Cronin's Comments on Dame Lillard | Five on the Floor

Welcome to the latest episode of Five on the Floor and the Five Reasons Sports Network. Thanks for joining us on your favorite podcast app. We're on Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Red Circle, and the Five Reasons YouTube channel. If you're there, make sure you hit like, subscribe, and turn the notifications on. Also, check out Off the Floor. That's where you get texts directly from the four of us. You don't have to go to Twitter. It's winnow.app backslash offthefloor free for the first week. And then after that, it's $3.05 per month or $30 for the entire year. Also, check out the great sponsors of the Five Reasons Sports Network. That includes our friend Arash over at mortgagebyarash.com. That's mortgagebyarash.com. The phone number is 954-651-2057. That's 954-651-2057. Arash can help you get a mortgage in a challenging market. Right now, we obviously know that mortgage rates have fluctuated quite a bit and gone up. He will make sure you get the best rate. Also, he can work with you if you've got a credit score of 620 or above, and he's got access to all of the latest programs. Based in Sunrise, can service the entire area. Huge Miami Heat fan as well. Mortgagebyarash.com. The phone number 954-651-2057. 954-651-2057. And now, today's episode. Five on the floor. Riding for my dogs. Where is the game? You can check the score. Hustle hard. Couple scars. Wearing bubble frogs. Just like Buc-Zayn. You in trouble, y'all. Kept the floor clean. Got a whole band. Y'all seen the block. Stopping one here. Impact we trust. It's about having guts. We're here to bring the heat. Y'all can hang it up. Welcome to Five on the Floor, a daily insider show on the Miami Heat and the NBA, featuring Ethan Skolnick, Greg Sylvander, and Alex Toledo, plus others from the Five Reasons Sports Network. All right, welcome back to Five on the Floor. Here's today's floor plan. I'm Ethan Skolnick. You can follow me at EthanJSkolnick on the Five Reasons Sports. We got Alex Toledo. You can follow him at Tropical Blanket. Actually, as we're doing this, the guys are on playback following the Heat summer league game. So if this gets finished before that's over, you can check that out as well. We're on playback almost every day lately, so a good place to catch us and to interact with us. The news today, Joe Cronin, the general manager of the Portland Trailblazers, addressed the media out at summer league. This is the first time we've really heard from him directly since this whole process has gone on. There's been a lot of talking through people, but these were his direct comments. Now, do we know what Twitter account did we get this from, Alex? Do we know? Well, it's just straight up from the Blazers' YouTube. Okay, so we're taking it from Blazers' YouTube right now. Okay? These are some of his comments today. After you hear them, we're going to try to put them in context with comments that he's made previously at various points, whether it's been trade deadlines or off seasons, things he's said that, frankly, have not come true. Here you go. This is from the Blazers' YouTube channel. Frustrated? No. I understand. I mean, I think that obviously is a place that he wants to be and that makes sense for him, you know, as far as the rest of the makeup of the team and all that. As a team, you always hope that, you know, you have more options. And to have limited options like that is, I wouldn't call it frustrating, but it prevents you from, you know, perhaps seeking out the best return. So, you know, it's something we'll have to work through. Well, building around Dame has always been the goal, all the way even through the draft. It was the difficult things that we ran into were finding the right deals. So, you know, in the previous two years, we drafted at seven, we drafted at three. You know, in the meantime, we were scouring the market looking for more win-now players. And what kept happening was those players just weren't available. So each time we just tried to weigh that, you know, in Shaden's draft, pick seven, what does that look like versus what's available in the market? And the answer was obvious, Shaden's better. And same thing happened this time. What does pick three look like versus the return in the market? It wasn't close. Had to go three. So it wasn't necessarily intentional. It was just doing what's best for this team. And we kept doing that, and I could see why, you know, Dame would look at it and say, well, this isn't a win-now opportunity as much as, or at least as much of a win-now opportunity as some other places. So from that regard, I mean, I understand his position, and I respect it, and it makes sense to me why he would look to go elsewhere. All right, as we come back here again, Alex and Ethan are going to be with you. I want to start here. First thing, look, I don't think we need to villainize anybody. I mean, these are people trying to do their jobs for various teams. And look, his intentions may have been good in terms of making those deals, but ultimately it's a business. You either get done what you need to get done, or you don't. And after somebody gives you opportunity after opportunity to do it, and it's not done, then they have the right to say, I understand under contract, but we're talking about a player who's given 11 years to this franchise, who was one of the greatest players in franchise history, top three for sure. And he has the right to say, okay, I want to go somewhere else. Now, Cronin has the right to say, I don't want to send you to that specific place because you're limiting my leverage. But ultimately, there have to be other teams that are involved that are willing to give up significant assets, more so than Miami, where Dame is going to go and be happy and thrive. And so far, that does not exist. And so, Alex, what this feels to me like is he's kind of going out there publicly to say, look, we did everything we could. He's trying to cover his own ass to a certain degree, which, again, I get it. And maybe he holds off a little bit, but it doesn't seem like there's another offer out there. Because if there was another offer out there, Alex, he wouldn't be having this press conference. He would be making the other deal, correct? Yeah, I'm pretty much with you. I think once that quote was tweeted out by Woj and others where he said, if it takes months, it takes months, or whatever, which wasn't part of what we showed, but, you know, he talked for about 15 minutes, so we can only show so much. But I just think outside of that, when you listen to him, whether you read the quotes, whether you watch the video of the whole thing, if you're a Heat fan, all of this should sound pretty comforting to you. Like, this should be comforting to hear, because it's like he's resorted to having to say all this stuff in public, even though he was already working through other ways. And I kind of understand where he's coming from on pretty much everything he said. He was pretty, you know, for as much as you can say, which he's kind of limited in a press conference like this with how much he can say details-wise, he kind of said a lot. Like, he was saying, you know, because the Heat are the only team he has listed, it has limited the market. And he started off that clip in the presser by saying, you know, he said he's not frustrated, but then immediately explained why it's frustrating to, you know, only have one team be in the market for this guy who you don't want to trade in the first place and all that. And honestly, it really just sounds like he's trying to squeeze everything he can out of the Heat. It's negotiation and it's happening to the public now, which we've seen happen before. And now he's just like basically hoping, this is what it sounds like to me at least, he's hoping for other teams to try to, you know, get into the Dame sweepstakes with an actual offer, a real offer that's more competitive than whatever the Heat have put on the table right now, which, you know, me speculating, it feels like the Heat haven't put everything out there that they can. I don't know that to be true or not, but maybe they're trying to get the Heat to give, put together their best offer that they can, as well as trying to get other teams to join the Dame sweepstakes so that they can somewhat get the Heat to bid against another team and make them pony up. It feels like all of this is, you know, he's just saying what he needs to at this point. And like you said, trying to cover up for what he's done so far. It's just like, yeah, as he said time and time before, you know, there's been clips of kind of him since he's been here, excuse me, since he's been there in Portland, kind of saying over and over again, this team is about, you know, getting into a win now mode for Dame, trying to, you know, accelerate that process. And he's been saying it for a long time now. And honestly, it feels like he's just saying we couldn't get that done. We couldn't get that done. We went with the better option, which was draft shading, draft scoop, and not make, I mean, he said other guys weren't available that were win now moves. We don't know if that's true or if he's just covering himself there. It just feels like everything there is pointing in each direction. But they got good players. That's the thing. Like, it's not like they have no foundation. I mean, to use dumb negative there, they do. So they got a head start on the rebuild already. Right. So this would be the next step. And, you know, there's a point where it's okay. Get as much as you can for the benefit of the organization. And as Alex, I think has hit the floor here. And there's another point where it's, you know, getting greedy. And I think we're kind of getting closer to the stage where it's getting greedy. And that's the issue here. And the other part of this, and Alex will rejoin in a second, I'm sure. I think his mic hit the floor. The other part of this is it feels more to me that he's trying, again, to get the Heat to race against time than he is really believing that somebody else is going to get involved. In other words, I don't think that the Heat's real competition is another team. I don't see another team out there. He doesn't want to go to the Clippers. He definitely doesn't want to go to Boston, Philadelphia. Some of the other teams have been talked about. So this is not so much about going about the Heat having to battle another team for Dame services. It's whether or not the Heat want to sit on this for a while. So do the Heat want to go into training camp without him? Okay. Do the Heat want to go into training camp with Tyler Hero and Kyle Lowry and others still on the roster? We've heard their names in trade talk the entire year. That, to me, is more the issue. It's not so much another team getting involved, and it felt like he was kind of saying to the Heat, listen, we'll wait as long as this is necessary until you pony up a little bit more. And this is why I come back to this, Alex. This is why I think that, ultimately, this is going to be about the Heat throwing him one more thing. And so that he can save face. This felt to me like a press conference where he was out there kind of explaining, Andy, you want to get fired? Here's the thing, too. He does not have Andy Ellisburg's job security. Okay? Andy Ellisburg is a made man. He is tenured. There's nothing that's going to happen during this, because Andy handles most of the negotiations. Okay? Pat's the higher level, sets the agenda, but Andy deals with GMs more specifically. Okay? Andy's not in trouble. Andy's not going anywhere. Joe Cronin, we don't know. This is one of the benefits of stability, by the way. It's why Eric Spolscher can try different things during the regular season and tinker and has been able to all these years, because we know he's not getting fired. Okay? He hasn't really. Now, I know he said he could have gotten fired in 2010 three times. Since then, we haven't talked about that at all. That's not since 2010, 2011. Same is true with Andy. Same is true with Adam Simon. You can take certain risks, and you can conduct negotiations or develop a player or sign a certain type of player and give that time when you know you're going to be there. Okay? And there's nothing that's going to change that. It is different when you're in the position of, say, a Joe Cronin right now, where he doesn't know if he's going to be here in a year or two. He doesn't have job security. He doesn't have the kind of track record any of these guys have. And, look, ownership out there is not popular. As I've been following the Blazers' Twitter a little bit more carefully, they're not happy with ownership out there right now. Remember, this was Paul Allen's team initially, and there was some family stuff and everything else. So this felt to me a little bit like a cry for help to the heat. So I'm with you on it. It's kind of like, okay, just put me out of my misery here. Give me one more asset, and let's get this thing done. I don't think that he wants to hold this thing until August or September. This is counterproductive. Let's look at him on the Blazers' side, and then we'll go to break. It's counterproductive to the Blazers. I mean, we saw what Shane Sharp looks like. Ice Scoot, we haven't gotten as good a look because of, obviously, what's happened with him with a minor injury. But they should want to move on also. Do they want this hangover themselves as they're trying to sell tickets for the next month? Of course not. I don't know why they would want to keep this going, and that's why I think all of it is posturing. It's like, yeah, technically, we could let this go on for months, and we could just keep haggling. But I don't think that's in their best interest. And I know, like, us over here who cover the heat and actively want Damien Lillard to end up on the heat because it would be great for us as a network, right? Like, it sounds like, okay, of course these guys are going to think that. But no, like, why would they want to drag this on for so long? It could get uglier. Like, I know everybody in the media is kind of doubting that Dame is going to do anything else that he's already done to make it ugly. I feel like we're kind of building towards that if this drags for months. I don't think he wants to do that either, but it's like, he's done everything he can outside of saying himself all these things that it is, Jesus, is instead going through his agent and going through Sam Aimick and going through Chris Haynes. He's doing it in other ways, but it's like, I think they're trying to avoid a situation where, you know, you kind of maybe get close to burning that bridge with Dame. I think that would be just a quicker way for, you know, somebody in that front office to lose their job, because if you really hurt that relationship that was so, you know, prized to them, I think it's in everybody's best interest to get this done relatively soon. And as you talked about before on here, like, it would be a complete disaster, a circus, if they let this get through to, like, media day and have him, you know, show up to training camp. It's a disaster, because the other part about it is, like, whatever you would get back in return for Dame, you know, you would rather kind of have him there for the start of training camp and ideally ahead of that so that everybody can kind of prepare themselves for what the season is actually going to be. Everybody can kind of be in the right, on the same page when it comes to the direction of the franchise instead of this whole thing where, like, it's just this tense back and forth, where you know Dame should not end up back on the Portland Trailblazers. And I just don't think the market is there right now. It feels like he wants there to be a market, and he's just kind of defending the moves that he's made. He's kind of defending himself. And that's where I end up kind of sympathizing with him. But a lot of people are claiming that he's just straight up lying on some of these things. Like, when it comes to other guys not being available, I don't know if I'm there. I just think that he's doing... I don't even know. But here's the thing. It's a last resort, basically. Right. I don't know if it matters if he's lying. That's the thing. Like, again, it's a results business. Like, I don't even want to go to impugn his character or his honesty. I don't even know that there's any... I know some Blazers fans have done that. I don't see the point in that. I just see this. All they did was re-sign Jeremy Grant. I mean, that's the only win-now move that they made. That's it. And that's just not enough. And, you know, getting on Dame for re-signing his friend and all that, again... Oh, Matisse-Tybill. Right. And then matching the Matisse-Tybill. Just kind of a win-now move. They're not in a position... Can I make one other point really quickly? Mm-hmm. In the rest of this press conference, at one point, he actually, like, went and started talking about how with the cases of C.J. McCollum and Josh Hart, the guys he named specifically. You can also throw in Gary Payton II. All these guys, he said it. They worked with them to send them to, like, spots that, you know, made sense for them. But they won't do it anymore. As well as being able to get a good return and all that. That was kind of his point of trying to balance sending them to a spot that they like. And he was basically saying with other guys, they were willing to go to multiple places. Damon's only willing to go to one. But he's done it for C.J. McCollum. He's done it for Josh Hart. And you could say he did it for Gary Payton, right? Who got sent right back to the place he wanted to go. Even with the injury. And even with the injury that he suffered. But even as much as C.J. gave it to the franchise, which you can call him the second most significant player they've had over the past decade, he's still not Damon. So, I don't know. So, would this be that different if Damon said, okay, I'm also willing to go to the Lakers. Okay? Which was a team he was willing to go to a couple off seasons ago, by the way. The Lakers don't have the assets to get him. So, how much better would that have made it? What it seems like Cronin wants, and then we'll go to break here, what it seems like Cronin wants is, he wants Damon to save one of the teams that has assets. That's not how this works. It's not, Cronin is not really saying, hey, Damon, give me three teams. And Damon could give him three teams that have nothing to give Portland. No more to give to the other two that have no more to give Portland than Miami does. Right? That's what he could be saying. Well, that doesn't help Cronin. Okay? At all. He wants him to say, hey, I'm willing to go to Detroit. Because they've got a ton of first round picks. I'm willing to go to San Antonio. I'm willing to go to OKC. If Damon said he wanted to go to OKC, you don't think he would trade him to OKC? Of course he would. He would take the 12 picks back. Even if it was contending teams who don't have the richest shelf of assets, it would be great. For Joe Cronin and the Blazers. Right? Just to get teams bidding against each other, I think. To try to get the best possible return, which he kept saying in that presser. Best possible return. And he even outlined different types of packages. Right? Whether it's picks by themselves, or young players in a pick, or a win now player. He outlined all these different things. He's basically saying he's open. Just give me a real offer. It sounds like the Heat haven't put everything down. Again, I'm speculating. And they're kind of just waiting for again, the best possible return. Because there's nobody for them to bid against. Right. They're bidding against time. They're not bidding against other teams. All right. We want to tell you about another great sponsor of the Five Reasons Sports Network. You don't need to bid here. You can go to mosaics.com. Stones and more. 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We probably will get into some more Summer League stuff as we go. I'm actually traveling out to Vegas tomorrow. By then, I don't know that anybody's still going to be playing. But hopefully, there'll be some things to report out there. So I'll have reports out there, along with Sean Rochester, who's going also. Let's do our predictions at the end of this thing, OK? One minute for each of us. Now that you heard Cronin today, do you think that this thing gets done before they leave Vegas, 16th? Which is what I thought was going to happen. But it seems like he tried to push it today, so maybe it does. I actually feel better about that prediction than I did yesterday. Do you think it gets done by the 16th? I'm going to say no. And not just for non-jinxing purposes, which is a bonus as to why I'm saying no. I think there's no, at this point in time, from what it seems like as an outsider, from my perspective, again, there's no reason for the Heat to up their price right now. And I think that's kind of what the Blazers are up against. And because of that, maybe they drag it on for just a little more. And so I'm basically taking the field. But that doesn't mean I think it drags on for months or anything like that. I'm basically saying it happens a little after that. The Blazers try to haggle, like you said, for maybe one more asset, maybe two. Perhaps the Heat already have an outline of an offer where a Tyler Herro would get moved for an extra pick or two. And it's more about getting the Heat's drafted assets as well. Again, I'm just speculating. But it's something like that, where it's like they're trying to squeeze everything they can out of them. And that's Joe Cronin's job. He's doing the best he can at this point. Like I said, the last resort is going to the public and saying all these things because he has to be able to move the line somehow because he'd have nobody to bid against. So I'm just saying it's going to happen after the 16th because sooner than later is still where I'm at. Here's the thing that could push it along on the Heat side. If they end up with a deal for Tyler Herro that's not there forever, it's possible that they could have something working. We've talked about some of the other teams that could be involved, San Antonio, Brooklyn, et cetera. And those teams choose to move on. Do we think that there's any chance of that? That that's pushing it? That they could? And so I sort of say that rhetorically. But maybe it's not just about what the Blazers will do, but what another team will do. And maybe the Blazers are counting on that, that, look, we need this extra pick. We've got to get it for Herro, but maybe that other team pulls away. So we'll see. Again, I'm going to stick to my prediction of the 16th because I'm flying out on Tuesday and it will likely happen while I'm in the air. 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