Dame Lillard saga: Is public perception pivoting toward Heat? | Five on the Floor

Welcome to the latest episode of Five on the Floor on the Five Reasons Sports Network. Thanks for joining us on your favorite podcast app. We're on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Red Circle, also the Five Reasons YouTube channel. Make sure you hit like, subscribe, and turn the notifications on. Also, check us out on Off the Floor. Text directly to your phone from Alice, Greg, Brady, and myself. Bypass Twitter, X, Instagram, Threads, Facebook, all of it. You get text directly to your phone. Special Q&As. We give away $75 in promo funds. Only available to our subscribers. So check it out at winnow.app. That's winnow.app backslash Off the Floor. Since I mentioned PrizePix already, make sure you sign up there. Use code 5FIBE. Get that initial deposit matched up to $100. You can play the FIBA games. That's right. We're going to be up early in the morning while somebody here on this podcast tonight is. Check us out on PrizePix using the code 5FIBE. Get that initial deposit matched up to $100. Again, you can play NFL, NBA, MMA, and more. But also, check us out on Playback. Playback.tv backslash 5RSN. We'll be watching Jovic dominate as usual. And also, we'll be watching Team USA early in the morning by the time you listen to this episode. And now, today's from the 5 Reasons Sports Network. All right. Welcome back to 5 on the Floor. Here's today's floor plan. I'm Ethan Skolnik. You can follow me, Ethan J. Skolnik, on the 5 Reasons Sports. I've got Alex Toledo. You can follow me at Tropical Blanket. And we've got our guy Eternal. You know him from our Playback channel. He's a host over there regularly. You can follow him at Eternal Bass on Twitter. We're going to do a little bit more Dame today, but from a slightly different perspective. It seems like the needle gets moved just a smidge on a daily basis. We're going to talk about perception. And we're going to talk about perception in the sense of what the Portland Trailblazers are doing. And you are noticing, or at least I'm noticing, and we're starting to notice, a public relations shift here a little bit, or at least a public perception shift. So I'm going to give a couple of examples here, and we'll play off of this. But this is starting to play out the way that we've talked about on Five on the Floor, on Off the Floor, on all of our channels, that this is moving towards training camp. And as it gets closer to training camp, it's going to become more and more obvious that the team in the crosshairs is not the Miami Heat, which they look like they're a top three seed, top four seed in the Eastern Conference regardless. But it's the Portland Trailblazers who should be pivoting to try to be a 14th or 15th seed in the West, but are holding Dame Lillard hostage because they can't seem to pick a certain direction. So we're going to go through a couple of things today, and let's start from sort of the big dogs, and I want to go back to Portland. We didn't even talk about this one at Turtle today, but Stephen A. Smith has essentially, who is a voice for the masses, he doesn't have 16 people debating him every day like Skip does, but Stephen A. Smith came out and has essentially said that at this point, Portland should just trade Dame. And that's not necessarily what Stephen A. has been saying all this time, that Dame went ahead, was public with everything, and at this stage it makes sense to trade him. Mark Spears, we talked about the Mark Spears interview with Dame Lillard, but Mark Spears on a podcast saying again that Miami makes the most sense for Dame, that Dame is entrenched in his position, and that's the direction that this should ultimately go. A report in Forbes, which you pointed out to me today at Turtle, that Sean Devaney wrote an article, he sometimes appears on our YouTube channel with our DeForest show, and he came out, does anyone have that one up? We should get to that one. Alex, you got that one up? What was the money quote here from an executive in there, an unnamed executive, Devaney likes to use unnamed executives. Incredible teamwork by you there, just those extra five seconds of talking, just enough time to pull it up, thank you so much for that. That's what I do. All right, so, quote, there's not that many teams that are going to give you a bunch of players and picks for a 33-year-old who can't stay healthy and has a giant contract sitting there. It was not anything Dame said or agent Aaron Goodwin said that shut down the market. That stuff didn't help, but there were teams lined up for him even before that, and that comes via Forbes. An NBA executive is the person who said that. Okay, so we don't know who the NBA executive is, but the overall point here is you have three national reporters. I don't know if you want to call Stephen a reporter, but he does some reporting, but he's certainly an influencer. He's a top 10 media influencer, I would say overall, who is basically saying Dame should be able to get the hell out of Portland. Mark Spears, one of the most respected reporters, somebody who was just inducted into the Hall of Fame with a Kurt Gowdy award, saying Dame should be able to get the heck out of Portland. Sean Devaney quoting an executive, saying essentially that this is a big ruse, that there were going to be all of these offers for Dame Lillard if simply Dame had shut up and his agent had shut up. There never were going to be that many offers, and again, all of this is coming around to the type of reporting that we've been doing, and not just reporting, just our evaluation of the situation, which is that there were not going to be that many teams that A, had the need for a Dame Lillard at this stage of his career, at his price, could afford that price, and also, and I've talked about this, and we just got into this on playback a little bit, this idea that the Heat's picks are not going to be high enough. First thing, how do you know that? Yes, they've been a successful organization, but we don't know where they're going to be towards the end of Riley and Jimmy's run here in a few years when these picks actually have to be vested and given to the other team, but additionally, if you're basing it on now, any team that has a high lottery pick right now is not going to want a Dame Lillard, they don't have a need for a Dame Lillard, and they're not going to pay a Dame Lillard. So again, a lot of what is being said now feels like echoes of what we said two months ago, three months ago, right? I mean, is that fair? I'll go to you first, Alex, and then we'll go to Eternal on this. Like, it's just, I feel like everybody's coming around to us now. Yeah, because it's like nothing's changed. Nothing's changed. And it's like, you think, by now, right, if there's, you know, a delayed superstar situation, not getting to where they want to go, like other situations in the past, these other, like, secret teams, these sleeper teams come around and try to, you know, swing the momentum their way. It just hasn't happened. None of it has happened. Like, I guess the closest thing that qualifies is what you guys alluded to before with Tatum trying to call and recruit Dame to go play in Boston, which is not a threat whatsoever. And, you know, today confirmed that. But I guess that's the closest thing that qualifies to a sleeper team there, because otherwise in the news, there hasn't been one. And so it just comes right back to, well, you know, what we, what everybody has been saying since this thing first came out, it's like the market is not there. Not only because he said he only wants to play in Miami and cause maybe, maybe the agent did this, maybe not, you know, kind of hinted that he wouldn't play for other teams, all that aside, which is important. Like the executive said, the problem is that there's a whole lot that goes into trading for a Damian Lillard. I don't agree with the injury stuff all the way that the, the, the sentiment that he's always injured. I think it was, there was a stretch there where he had the issues, but it seems like he may be over that. I'm not sure. But other than that, I agree with the sentiment that, you know, it's a 33 year old point guard. It was on this ginormous contract, which, you know, his contract is going to become the norm for guys of his caliber sooner than later, but it is what it is. Like it's, it's huge. You have to account for him being whatever he's going to be 37 at the end of that deal, making upwards of 60 mil. It just, it's not a nothing factor, right? Like team has to account for that. It's, and also it's, it's gotta be like a team who is, who needs a point guard ready to contend. So it's like you, you start narrowing down so many different teams, like the team that you want to play for that needs him, a team that he thinks he could win a title with all of a sudden you're you've narrowed down the market to like how many teams at most one, one, one. Yeah. Even if you try to come up with other teams, it would like, if you, you didn't optimistic job of trying to come up with other teams for Dame, it will be a handful at most. And even then it's like, you're reaching on a lot of them too, because it's, it's gotta be a team who needs a point guard and is contending. And that's, and also would be willing to take on that deal. So, I mean, it's most, most, most teams that are contending, most teams that are contending have an elite point guard. I mean, Boston would be the exception to this. I guess they're starting Derek white, but the majority, I guess, but they're not in, I mean, well, Phoenix doesn't have an elite point guard, but they've got two elite shooting guards masquerading as point guards. And you're going to take the ball out of their hands now to give it to Lillard creator. I mean, what is your view on this? Are we, is common sense starting to prevail publicly? At least, you know, there's a word that is gaining traction in the younger generation is called dilute, which is short for delusional. And a lot of times, you know, we create scenarios, we create, you know, things that aren't there. And, you know, when you break it down to just basic math of it, like the person said, I, and I agree with Alex and you think they kind of went overboard with can't stay healthy. I'll take it from the heat standpoint because it just helps them out. But I mean, he was shut down last year. He was healthy last year. Eternal. He was shut down so that they could tank at the end of the year to get a pick to help him. And then they use the pick on his young replacement. Would you guys not feel disrespected? If you were Dave, like you guys told me you were going to build around me and then you shut me down to get me as better. You can get me a better player. And all they did was draft teenagers and a guy it's like somebody promising you, they'll go to prom with you. And then when it's time to like, set up everything for prom and then they give you to run around and then they end up going with someone else. And it's like, well, you can't be mad that I went with someone else. Like, how dare you? So it just feels like this summer in the NBA off season has just been like, don't trust handshake agreement. Whether we're talking about like James Harden and Philadelphia situation, whether we're talking about the Dame Lillard and Portland situation is just like, at the end of the day, you have to remember that this is a business and that these teams are operating within the best interest you would think of their you like, no, we hear the reports of like, no one is going to throw off their five, seven year plan just for 33 year old Dame Lillard, because you would have to move so many assets to get him. And only team willing to do that is the Miami Heat. And they are willing to do it in a very strategic way that still keeps them in contention for a title. No one else is willing to do that. The Lakers don't have the assets to do that. The Milwaukee Bucks don't have the assets to do that. Even if they did, even if they do, he doesn't want to go there. So like, there's some things that you run into that kind of prevents that from happening. And I think, like you said, is everybody coming to the realization that what you have reported, what Greg has reported, what Chris Haynes reported, there's somebody else and I'm missing, but what was reported initially was true. Like there was no one trying to push an agenda for Dane. Like it is what it was. Because if there were offers out there, Portland would have spotlighted those offers. And it's interesting because after the break, I want to talk about what just happened with the Jonathan Taylor situation with the Colts. But if there were offers out there, they would have leaked. There was no offer. Brooklyn was involved, but they're involved as part of the hero part of this, not as part of the Dane part of this. And that to me was the one team that could have slipped in there because, again, well, relationship with Mikael Bridges, he actually wants to play with them. But that was the one team that could have slipped in there that maybe had enough pieces to make something work, could have gathered the draft picks, plays in New York. That was a team he did kind of mention out of the side of his mouth when he mentioned Miami at the very beginning. So that one could have made sense. But beyond that, there is not a team like that. And part of it is that it's really a two-tiered league right now. There are teams that are contending, and there are teams that are not in that place. The San Antonio Spurs, the Houston Rockets, the Detroit Pistons, the Orlando Magic, they're not trading for a Dane Lillard, and he doesn't want to be in a place like that right now. It doesn't have a chance to contend now that he has made winning and not loyalty his sole focus here. But the other part of this, we mentioned the national people. And before we go to the break, I just want to get to the locals. I don't want to disrespect Portland media, OK? And I don't want to disrespect Portland fans. I think it's one of the best fan bases in the league, OK? That was one of my favorite buildings to visit. They've been put through a lot by the organization over the years. They're very loyal to that franchise. And we've had people from Portland on the podcast, whether it's Sean Hyken on one side or Aaron Fentress on the other side. But I do think that you mentioned that word delude or delusion. I'm not hip enough to go short there, but there has been delusion, I think, among that media base about who this was going to affect more. To me, that's the primary delusion. It's not as much about the other offers that weren't out there, although that's part of it. But this perception that the Heat need to do this and the Blazers don't is completely out of whack. Without Tyler Heroplane, who they're now getting back, OK? Right. Well, but it comes to this. And this is the other thing that was said today. Mark Spears said, I'm going to Portland if Dame is still there. And I've been saying repeatedly, the national media will go to Portland. And not only that, it becomes a problem for the organization when they're trying to promote young players. I saw today Scoot is like trademarking for nicknames for himself. He wants to be a star. He wants to be a lead guy. How is he going to be a lead guy? How are they going to build their marketing, their advertising? They need to pivot to that because even with Dame, they're a 36 win team, OK? With Scoot and without Dame, they might be a 25 win team. But at least they'll know what their direction and their future are. If they bring Dame to camp and he speaks in camp, it is going to create complete mixed signals that Miami is not going to have to deal with on their side because of the maturity of their organization and also of the people who are there already and how they'll handle this, whether this is Lowry, Robinson, or as we found out through this summer, Hero. So my whole take on this is the flashpoint here is Dame coming to camp. And you're now starting to hear on some of these Portland podcasts, and it was Hyken's co-host who said it. It wasn't Hyken. I don't think you can bring him to camp. He said that on the podcast. I know our guy Drew Storr has been transcribing all this stuff. I think there's finally a recognition of, oh, ----, we're about a month away from camp, OK? Not even a month at this stage. This guy, he can't be there. It's going to be a total bleep show. And it's crazy to me that it's taken this long for everybody out there to start to figure it out. But it seems like they've started to figure it out. Now, there's one caveat to this, and after the break, I want to get to it, which is, well, sort of what just happened with the Indianapolis Colts. So I want to pivot back to it here. What a tease. What a tease, exactly. I do want to mention two of our sponsors here, though. Lynette, she was actually on our playback tonight. Insurance by Lynette.com, two N's, two T's, 954-581-8800, life insurance, car insurance, homeowner's insurance, renter's insurance. Lynette can get it for you. And again, she's a huge Miami Heat fan as well. She works for Aggressive Insurance Agency. Insurance by Lynette.com, based in kind of the North Broward area, in Service Hall, South Florida. Also, I want to mention BetterEdge. Go to BetterEdge.com. Use code 5RSN. Get $20 to play. Use code 5RSN, BetterEdge.com. Why is it legal in 45 states, including the state of Florida? Because you're betting against others who use it. You can find the line that you want. You are not betting against a bookie or the app, and you will get your money right away. We're running contests there as well. So, go to BetterEdge.com. Use code 5RSN. All right. So, here's what happened in Indianapolis, and this is just the other side of this before we close, because this would be the concern. Sometimes you're just not dealing with a rational actor on the other side. Like, this is in life and relationships, and sometimes you have the correct position, but the other side doesn't play by rules because they have a different perception of things, and they just want to be wrong, okay? And that's the way that this plays out. We just saw in Indianapolis, they have a running back in Jonathan Taylor who's coming off kind of an injury plague season but is an elite running back. They don't want to pay him in Indianapolis. They don't want to pay him because nobody wants to pay running backs right now, but they also weren't going to trade him even to a team that was willing to pay him. The Miami Dolphins and Green Bay Packers were willing to give him a significant extension to make him a top, both of them, according to reports, top seven running back paid in the league or higher. But Indianapolis, Jim Irsay, who is their owner but kind of acting in the role of Joe Cronin here, Jim Irsay asked for Jalen Waddle, according to reports from the Miami Dolphins, as well as a second round pick so that the Dolphins would have the right to pay a guy that they're not going to pay, they don't want to pay, and that they're putting on the PUP list for four games so they're not even going to use his services for the first four games. That's complete, irrational, crazy-ass behavior. Do either of you have the concern that Joe Cronin, Jody Allen, and the rest of the Portland Trail Chasers brass could be that insane? Eternal, you go first, and Alex, you close. Okay, so I'm glad that you brought up Jody Allen and the other part of the brain trust, because that did drop today, that they are not looking to take pennies on the dollar. Any of you out there that's listening, that have gone to dealerships, that have gone to anybody, buy a house or whatever it is, you're going to be negotiating, trying to get a deal, trying to make it an advantage for you. You can just say it. We could possibly see this deal not happen or happen at the trade deadline or even next summer. I'll play that role today on the pod, but it can happen later just because the people on the other side that you're dealing with are just not rational. They are being very emotional about doing business, which isn't fair to any party involved. We're still talking about human beings on either side of this who are getting moved or whatever, and it could happen. Here's another point. Last year, there were talks about Donovan Mitchell being traded to Miami. Danny Ainge wanted BAM, and you know Donovan Mitchell wasn't coming to Miami if BAM wasn't there. It's the same thing with DAME, and it could happen to where the trade doesn't happen simply because Joe Cronin and the brain trust of the Portland Trailblazers just don't want to do business with Miami. Yeah, and I think that's kind of the ultimate worry here. You guys have alluded to it. If they just draw a line in the sand and get prideful about it, they're like, no, we will not accommodate this guy. We're not going to send him to Miami unless they give us everything. If they go that route, then he might be screwed there in that aspect. Not screwed in that they have no chance of competing, but screwed at just getting him because, like you guys are saying, it's kind of above doing everything in good faith. They're playing above that. I think bringing up Jody Allen is a great point because we don't exactly know how hard-lined she may be in all of this because, for all we know, and again, I'm just speculating here. I'm just talking through it. This is not anything I've read or anything like that. For all we know, she's the one kind of instructing Joe Cronin to kind of behave in this way in the sense of like, okay, no, it's not good enough. Ask for more. Hold out. Do all this stuff. She's his boss. It's just kind of a factor at this point. To me, it's like, I don't know if they're working on that same kind of deadline that we hope they are, right, where we're all kind of like looking at the NBA calendar and being like, they probably want to get done before a training camp. You don't want to make it ugly, but if they're just looking at, you know, as far as trying to get everything out of the heat and maybe they're not accounting for the actual, like Eternal said, the actual people involved in all of this, whether it's not only the people who may or may not get traded, but the teammates of those players, the families of those players. It's having to have the organization, the people who work for it day to day, deal with that circus once media day comes. In training camp, players who don't know if they're going to be there or not, you know, why are they going to be committed to training camp? It's so much of a hassle. Why do you want to go through that when it's not going to get better for you? It's not. The more time passes by, like Dame is getting older and, you know, they're going to be bad either way. I get that. Like it's fine for them, but it's not going to get better. They're not going to get this huge package from somebody else. I don't see it happening. Like we kind of want to throw you a live real quick options. Let me throw it. Let me throw you a live real quick. Right. As far as what we know, there has been no counter offer to the first initial offer. Right. That's the thing. We don't know so much about where it stands. And one of the things that I saw thrown out today was on Sean Hyken's podcast, his co-host was like speculating that he thinks it's, you know, they're not that far away that it's maybe like a Jovich and a second round pick. And again, he wasn't reporting that he was kind of just saying that's where he would think. Right. And Sean Hyken responded by saying he thinks there it's more than that. So it's not just, you know, that he made me a second. So I wanted to kind of now lob the lob that you gave me up to Ethan to finish this triple value, because I wanted to hear what you kind of think about that. Well, I think that Sean's plugged in with the Blazers front office. So that doesn't mean he's carrying water for the front office, but it means he has a feeling for what they may or may not be willing to do. And so I would take what he said there a little bit more than what his co-host said there. I think we all believe that it will come down to something small at the end, because I feel like the Blazers need to just declare victory somehow by getting some extra piece that the Heat were willing to give up anyway. I've said that over and over. But I think the key point made here that Eternal made is right. I mean, again, you just may not be dealing. We assume everybody in sports, because they've attained these positions, acts purely on the numbers and what's best for business. And I can tell you that front office executives are emotional. They are emotional. It's about winning the trade. And I do think that there is something to this, this sort of spiteful attitude that there's so many trades when you hear about years later, trades that didn't happen or didn't happen. You will hear years later stuff about we weren't going to trade him to this team or we weren't going to trade him to that team. Look, Kawhi Leonard won a championship with Toronto because of a break. He refused to send him to the Lakers, refused because of his history with the Lakers. He could have gotten more, most likely, from the Lakers, OK, or in some kind of a deal that included the Lakers than ultimately what he got, which was DeMar DeRozan was a good, very good player, obviously, but kind of kept them marginally competitive and then sort of led to this tank period. He could have done better if he traded Kawhi somewhere else. But you know what? I think that's a great point. Even the pop thing, though, like, you know, it's pop, right? He's considered one of the top three coaches of all time, been there, done that. And you know what? I respect that more because it's a direct rival. We're like, he and the Blazers have absolutely no nothing to do with each other. I mean, you could not put two teams in the NBA more further apart. No, they are. Literally, they are the two teams that are the most far apart from each other. They don't have anything to do with each other. Not even just that. Even the Kawhi and Dane part are two totally different situations. Right, because Kawhi basically dipped on his team. Had the one year left where Dane was four. Kawhi dipped on his team. They couldn't agree about what his injury was. Dane was not injured, but pretended to be injured for his team. Literally, everything that Dane has done has been in the best interest of the Portland Trail Blazers. And that's why it's- And they finessed him. They finessed him. They duped him. No, they absolutely did. But they're not going to see it that way. And again, the concern is, and I wonder about this because this cycles back to the beginning of the episode, and we thank our I wonder if the pressure from those like, we just saw Chris Broussard say it. Now Stephen A. Smith is saying it. Nick Wright has said it. From some of these people, and if you don't think these executives pay attention to these carnival barkers, I tell you, they absolutely do. They watch those stupid shows. They know what's being said about them. And I wonder a little bit if the pressure that's coming from some of those folks actually backfires. Because the Blazers are not going to be told who to send Dame Lillard to by Stephen A. Smith or Nick Wright or Chris Broussard, and they're going to do what they damn well please. And that just does occur to me just based on covering other executives. But I can tell you this as we close. Whenever executives act prideful and out of emotion, they **** up. And that's, to me, is where this thing is headed. Anyway, we'll bleep that out. No, we won't. Have a good night, everybody. Thanks to Alex. Thanks to Eternal. More episodes later in the week.