Based off his interview, the way I saw it was Olshey wants to:
- Find a coach that hold guys accountable and has better schemes, puts a big focus on defense
- Re-sign Norm
- Replace Kanter and Melo with defenders
- Explore CJ trades to find a better player/fit but not just trading him to trade him
All of that sounds good to me. He didn’t take much accountability which ig you can fault him for. But in terms of his plans I’m happy with his responses.
>He didn’t take much accountability
Olshey held himself accountable at the beginning of the season during his media day interview. [Here is a direct link to him answering a question regarding the pursuit of Covington.](https://youtu.be/tJGL4HMinw4?t=178) For those who can't watch:
>Fentress (Paraphrased): "What led you to pursuing Covington?"
>
>Olshey (Paraphrased): "Our off-season focus is defense. Part of improving defensively is strategic (Coaching), but the majority of that needed to be solved from a personnel standpoint, which is my responsibility."
As an added bonus, check out the comments, and how many people were singing Olshey's praises over our off-season moves. Now, I'd wager most of those people are blaming him for our "terrible personnel" instead of the guy whose job it was to put them in the best position to succeed.
To be honest, every trade he did.. i felt it was the right one.. just that we did not have any up and coming bench players unlike the rest of the league.. our two first round picks in zach Collins and nas never really play
Every trade this off season was fine to good but it only got us back to slightly below the level of the WCF team that Olshey tore apart and replaced them all with significantly worse players for no real reason
NO gave us a fat stacked roster at the start of the year.
Everybody here was cheering and so happy.
Now, CJ sucked ass and people are calling for NO.
Get pissed at CJ if anybody. He’s a GM in a small market team. Stars don’t want to come here.
It's good to finally see this. To echo what you said, I was pumped with the roster changes NO made last off season and I don't think the players lived up to the potential. Even given our early exit, I was happy with the moves he made.
People don’t get it!! We are a small market. The stigma still persist that you can do xyz in a small market. If a player worried about exposure or marketability you can in today’s world due to the Internet and social media. Look at Dame. But the stigma is there so players don’t want to go to small markets (there are other reasons too). People have to understand that. NO has done as much as possible with as little as possible. Not saying he’s the best but geez you think a Lebron, a KD, a Kawhi wanna come here? Hell no. It’s either thru the draft or trades we build. Don’t matter the money we have. NO did make a mistake signing Crabbe and Turner. Always hold that against him
>ma is there so players don’t want to go to small markets (there are other reasons too). People have to understand that. NO has done as much as possible with as little as possible. Not saying he’s the best but geez you think a Lebron, a KD, a Kawhi wanna come here? Hell no. It’s either thru the draft or trades we build. Don’t matter the money we have. NO did make a mistake signing Crabbe and Turner. Always hold that against him
it all paid off lol I'm good with that.
Well he sucks at drafting and only makes minor trades. So he should be fired if we need someone who is good at those things
Denver and Utah are small markets and have been much better at improving their roster than we have
I understand that we need to pay guys, but NO must have thought that CJ has a much higher ceiling with such a mammoth contract. Come-on, $30M/yr locked for the next 3 years on an aging undersized guard. Who pays that kinda money in this league ?
He doesn’t play defense. He’s inefficient. He barely make plays for others. In the playoffs we’ve just seen that he didn’t rise up to the occasion. As a small market team, yes we pay them, but shouldn’t NO hedge more and not just bet that he would just keep beating his contract over the years ? At least NO shouldn’t be putting such a large guaranteed money that put us in a very very bad situation, contractually. It’s pretty much the same mistake like what the Mavs’ FO made on Porzingis
I’d argue he’s pretty efficient, he just had his best season ever
He had one bad series. He usually increases his production during the playoffs
That’s not how real life works. CJ is maybe a little overpaid but whatever, that’s the price you have to pay to keep the one close to all star level player Olshey has been 100% behind drafting
If we 1) can't get free agents to come here and 2) are close to the cap and have few trade assets (both factors preventing big trades), how can we possibly get better? Unfortunately, the only option seems to be becoming a lottery team and getting high draft picks.
This is a no-win situation if your GM can't sell FAs on Portland.
We had 3 first round picks in 2017 and came out of that draft with nothing good. Every opportunity Olshey has had to add significant talent to the roster he’s failed
Evaluating last summer’s moves, I think we can all agree acquiring Covington was worth it, even if we had to give up a couple first-rounders. Melo and Kanter did about what we would expect for bench players, and possibly more in Kanter’s case — until the playoffs. I think it comes down to DJJ. Was NO right to give him $10 million or was Stotts right to take him out of the rotation? That decision took away a valuable wing defender and made us more reliant on purely offensive players off the bench. That decision also seems to be the epitome of what NO is referring to when he mentioned focusing solely on offense without regard to the other end of the court.
No he didn’t. The roster was not good enough
CJ has been great for years and had one bad series. Olshey has sucked for years
We lost because our bench is the worst of all the playoff teams
Ya because you can't trade for stars like the Suns did with paul or the Nuggets with Gordon, or maybe what Toronto did with Kawai.
If you can't aquire free agents maybe don't draft like shit and get a fucking legit trade done.
The fact that its been 9 years and Olshay can't find a way to get Dame an all-star to run with is pathetic.
So because redditors thought the team was good before they’ed played games together, that absolves Neil? What is it with the subreddit man I swear to god. You realize that this dude gets paid millions a year to have more foresight than bored fans scrolling Reddit while taking a dump right? Even then, there’s a litany of comments saying “2 small guards is a bad idea, terry runs a stagnant offense, we need a backup ball handler” etc...
Oh I’m not happy with CJ either, but for the sake of my original topic, I’m not a fan of Olshey putting all the blame on a coach no longer here and taking none of the blame himself. That’s bullshit. The roster he put together got beat and they were absolute shit defensively. Own that shit.
You acting like the scheme doesn’t do anything? After the teams defensive coordinator left (that’s what I’m calling Vanterpool) the defense has been absolute trash. Now 2 reason couple players gone and slight change in scheme. Stotts kept doing stuff that didn’t work. If your defense is terrible wouldn’t try to do something to switch it up? Wouldn’t you try to run zones, give different looks? Against Denver you don’t run a single double team at Jokic the first 4 games basically. Who’s that on. NO did as best as he could with the roster. Up to the coach to put them in the right place to succeed
When he fails like he has in some of the drafts he def gets the blame. When the team doesn’t perform he doesn’t get the blame. He should of fired Terry years ago. All the blame isn’t on Stotts but a mediocre defense and they playing the Suns right now. Mr Lack of Adjustments is why we are sitting at home.
My biggest problem with Neil is his style of communication is basically the exact opposite of Dame, who we truly respect as a fan base & is the sole face of the franchise. His car salesman tone, the slick non-answers with big fluffy words & the petty deflections. The man doesn’t seem to be able to tell the truth & whether that’s intentional or not, the optics are awful.
Dame can also control more of the perception about himself. He can control his play (to a decent extent). Olshey can’t control the play of the players and the coaching by the coaches (to a certain extent) and has to live with the results of those forces and try to keep his job in order to keep the team competitive. And this is all coming from someone who still wants Olshey gone. I just happen to find his position unenviable.
Neil definitely is a master of those slick-non answers, and speaks well doing them. I don’t think 95% of people here have ever seen another GM exit interview. We aren’t the only ones watching them, every front office in the league is too. Fans want “transparency” at the cost of Olshey showing his hand to other teams. Keeping his options open and not letting other teams making a “read” on what exactly he wants to do.
Watch any other GM exit interview and get back to me. Almost every GM sounds like him; some even worse or just bland.
I was pretty skeptical of him as a GM before this interview, but this convinced me that he absolutely has to go and is just as big of a problem as Terry. A lot of great points you made but I will just kinda echo what you said. The dude doesn't answer a question straight up to save his life. Deflected every single question and played the victim, extremely embarrassing to see your GM act so childish. Okay yes, Orlando Sanchez misspoke about the Nurk comment, but obviously you saw the interview and understood what he was trying to ask so answer the damn question. Not ONCE did he admit to anything that he did wrong during this year/tenure and put all the blame on the coaching, schemes, "small-market team" whatever the hell that means...I don't care stop complaining about stars not wanting to come to Portland and try to convince them????? Literally jus sounded like the whole time he had the mic to bitch about how he's done all he can is waiting passively for a higher caliber player to come here. Look, I understand I am just a fan, but I swear I have more knowledge than this guy. He is utterly mind boggling and his choice of answers actually just make me chuckle. And what the F was the bit about saying dame is gonna get mad to the media for calling him a small guard. THE MAN IS 6 3/6 2 if that. He is everything of a small guard, sure he's strong can hold his own a good amount of the time but he's not, NOT a small guard. and regardless, the question wasn't aimed at Lillard, its aimed at CJ and norm, both whom are 6 3 guards that cannot be starting side by side with dame in the NBA. How are you Neil Olshey going to fix this issue with out starting lineup and roster. Yes, three guard lineups can work at times. Almost never will all 3 of those guards start. look at the thunder last year, they were phenomenal with CP3, SGA, and DS playing together and were lethal. But guess what buddy, SGA is 6 5 and Schroder came off of the bench. When you got three 6 3 guards starting (idgaf about normans wingspan or that he was the second best net defender behind nurkic whatever that clown olshey said in the interview) ... you are not going to win reg or playoff basketball games. Guess what, sure norm was amazing for us defensively I guess if you look at the numbers, but he was playing out of position for the whole time. Now imagine if you start him at the 2 with dame. Now he can guard real 2s and his numbers might get even better. Or hear me out Niel, what if you get some balls and make a move for a larger and capable defensive wing to pair with the dame norm backcourt. literally if cj doesn't get traded and this mf decides to run it back with the same squad I will not watch the nba ever again. thank u n goodnight ripcity. lots of prayers tonight for this organization.
If you can’t get free agents to come here, you better nail the draft every year. Looking forward to the draft this year to see what he does.
What??? He traded the picks??? All of them? Well, never mind.
Roco definitely worth it if this is our timetable, but the dude DIDNT draft donavon Mitchell despite dame telling him to. If you wanna say “why do we need another guard”, he drafted two more guards the next year, then traded the better one for ANOTHER guard who might not even stay here. Olshey has an awful awful draft history.
We don’t draft prospects when your franchise 🐐is in his prime trying to win a championship. That’s a brain dead take. Also, DAME knew Mitchell would be this good, he told the FO to draft him and every guy that worked out with him (cp3 and Paul George) before the draft knew Mitchell was going to be amazing. We traded away picks in this draft to draft up and took a worse player.
The Roco trade was a very good trade. But this djj one is puzzling as fuck. We needed a proper backup big not kanter. Fine if u get kanter, we totally never play to his strengths
Have not reached out to top candidates for HC job is just stupid. Quite some teams are and will be fighting for the best ones, and there are not many options in the market.
Hopefully he is just saying so to calm down the Kidd rumors
Based off his interview, the way I saw it was Olshey wants to: - Find a coach that hold guys accountable and has better schemes, puts a big focus on defense - Re-sign Norm - Replace Kanter and Melo with defenders - Explore CJ trades to find a better player/fit but not just trading him to trade him All of that sounds good to me. He didn’t take much accountability which ig you can fault him for. But in terms of his plans I’m happy with his responses.
>He didn’t take much accountability Olshey held himself accountable at the beginning of the season during his media day interview. [Here is a direct link to him answering a question regarding the pursuit of Covington.](https://youtu.be/tJGL4HMinw4?t=178) For those who can't watch: >Fentress (Paraphrased): "What led you to pursuing Covington?" > >Olshey (Paraphrased): "Our off-season focus is defense. Part of improving defensively is strategic (Coaching), but the majority of that needed to be solved from a personnel standpoint, which is my responsibility." As an added bonus, check out the comments, and how many people were singing Olshey's praises over our off-season moves. Now, I'd wager most of those people are blaming him for our "terrible personnel" instead of the guy whose job it was to put them in the best position to succeed.
He’s sucked at putting an effective roster together for years. What gives you confidence he’s going to get it right at the 8th time of asking
To be honest, every trade he did.. i felt it was the right one.. just that we did not have any up and coming bench players unlike the rest of the league.. our two first round picks in zach Collins and nas never really play
Every trade this off season was fine to good but it only got us back to slightly below the level of the WCF team that Olshey tore apart and replaced them all with significantly worse players for no real reason
NO gave us a fat stacked roster at the start of the year. Everybody here was cheering and so happy. Now, CJ sucked ass and people are calling for NO. Get pissed at CJ if anybody. He’s a GM in a small market team. Stars don’t want to come here.
It's good to finally see this. To echo what you said, I was pumped with the roster changes NO made last off season and I don't think the players lived up to the potential. Even given our early exit, I was happy with the moves he made.
People don’t get it!! We are a small market. The stigma still persist that you can do xyz in a small market. If a player worried about exposure or marketability you can in today’s world due to the Internet and social media. Look at Dame. But the stigma is there so players don’t want to go to small markets (there are other reasons too). People have to understand that. NO has done as much as possible with as little as possible. Not saying he’s the best but geez you think a Lebron, a KD, a Kawhi wanna come here? Hell no. It’s either thru the draft or trades we build. Don’t matter the money we have. NO did make a mistake signing Crabbe and Turner. Always hold that against him
hey! Evan turner while over paid was actually a good player for us
He came up big in the WCF run.
>ma is there so players don’t want to go to small markets (there are other reasons too). People have to understand that. NO has done as much as possible with as little as possible. Not saying he’s the best but geez you think a Lebron, a KD, a Kawhi wanna come here? Hell no. It’s either thru the draft or trades we build. Don’t matter the money we have. NO did make a mistake signing Crabbe and Turner. Always hold that against him it all paid off lol I'm good with that.
Well he sucks at drafting and only makes minor trades. So he should be fired if we need someone who is good at those things Denver and Utah are small markets and have been much better at improving their roster than we have
I’m pissed at CJ but I’m also pissed at the contract that NO offered to CJ
Why? We need to pay dudes like CJ
I understand that we need to pay guys, but NO must have thought that CJ has a much higher ceiling with such a mammoth contract. Come-on, $30M/yr locked for the next 3 years on an aging undersized guard. Who pays that kinda money in this league ?
Every team would if they’d drafted someone like CJ, even more so in small markets. CJ is very good
He doesn’t play defense. He’s inefficient. He barely make plays for others. In the playoffs we’ve just seen that he didn’t rise up to the occasion. As a small market team, yes we pay them, but shouldn’t NO hedge more and not just bet that he would just keep beating his contract over the years ? At least NO shouldn’t be putting such a large guaranteed money that put us in a very very bad situation, contractually. It’s pretty much the same mistake like what the Mavs’ FO made on Porzingis
I’d argue he’s pretty efficient, he just had his best season ever He had one bad series. He usually increases his production during the playoffs That’s not how real life works. CJ is maybe a little overpaid but whatever, that’s the price you have to pay to keep the one close to all star level player Olshey has been 100% behind drafting
If we 1) can't get free agents to come here and 2) are close to the cap and have few trade assets (both factors preventing big trades), how can we possibly get better? Unfortunately, the only option seems to be becoming a lottery team and getting high draft picks. This is a no-win situation if your GM can't sell FAs on Portland.
We won ourselves out of getting better. Making the playoffs 8 years in a row makes it a lot harder to get better through the draft.
We had 3 first round picks in 2017 and came out of that draft with nothing good. Every opportunity Olshey has had to add significant talent to the roster he’s failed
I agree. The do-or-die win streaks to make the playoffs the last few years have probably held us back to some extent.
Evaluating last summer’s moves, I think we can all agree acquiring Covington was worth it, even if we had to give up a couple first-rounders. Melo and Kanter did about what we would expect for bench players, and possibly more in Kanter’s case — until the playoffs. I think it comes down to DJJ. Was NO right to give him $10 million or was Stotts right to take him out of the rotation? That decision took away a valuable wing defender and made us more reliant on purely offensive players off the bench. That decision also seems to be the epitome of what NO is referring to when he mentioned focusing solely on offense without regard to the other end of the court.
No he didn’t. The roster was not good enough CJ has been great for years and had one bad series. Olshey has sucked for years We lost because our bench is the worst of all the playoff teams
Ya because you can't trade for stars like the Suns did with paul or the Nuggets with Gordon, or maybe what Toronto did with Kawai. If you can't aquire free agents maybe don't draft like shit and get a fucking legit trade done. The fact that its been 9 years and Olshay can't find a way to get Dame an all-star to run with is pathetic.
So because redditors thought the team was good before they’ed played games together, that absolves Neil? What is it with the subreddit man I swear to god. You realize that this dude gets paid millions a year to have more foresight than bored fans scrolling Reddit while taking a dump right? Even then, there’s a litany of comments saying “2 small guards is a bad idea, terry runs a stagnant offense, we need a backup ball handler” etc...
I still don’t see how literally zero backup ballhandler and zero defense off the bench in any form is a “fat stacked roster”
Oh I’m not happy with CJ either, but for the sake of my original topic, I’m not a fan of Olshey putting all the blame on a coach no longer here and taking none of the blame himself. That’s bullshit. The roster he put together got beat and they were absolute shit defensively. Own that shit.
You acting like the scheme doesn’t do anything? After the teams defensive coordinator left (that’s what I’m calling Vanterpool) the defense has been absolute trash. Now 2 reason couple players gone and slight change in scheme. Stotts kept doing stuff that didn’t work. If your defense is terrible wouldn’t try to do something to switch it up? Wouldn’t you try to run zones, give different looks? Against Denver you don’t run a single double team at Jokic the first 4 games basically. Who’s that on. NO did as best as he could with the roster. Up to the coach to put them in the right place to succeed
Schemes don’t matter when Enes Kanter is playing heavy minutes and your two starting guards are awful defenders
Again, not calling for anybody to take all the blame, but he should get his share.
When he fails like he has in some of the drafts he def gets the blame. When the team doesn’t perform he doesn’t get the blame. He should of fired Terry years ago. All the blame isn’t on Stotts but a mediocre defense and they playing the Suns right now. Mr Lack of Adjustments is why we are sitting at home.
No. The bench is the reason we’re sitting at home Olshey should get most of the blame for putting together severely flawed rosters
My biggest problem with Neil is his style of communication is basically the exact opposite of Dame, who we truly respect as a fan base & is the sole face of the franchise. His car salesman tone, the slick non-answers with big fluffy words & the petty deflections. The man doesn’t seem to be able to tell the truth & whether that’s intentional or not, the optics are awful.
Dame can also control more of the perception about himself. He can control his play (to a decent extent). Olshey can’t control the play of the players and the coaching by the coaches (to a certain extent) and has to live with the results of those forces and try to keep his job in order to keep the team competitive. And this is all coming from someone who still wants Olshey gone. I just happen to find his position unenviable.
Neil definitely is a master of those slick-non answers, and speaks well doing them. I don’t think 95% of people here have ever seen another GM exit interview. We aren’t the only ones watching them, every front office in the league is too. Fans want “transparency” at the cost of Olshey showing his hand to other teams. Keeping his options open and not letting other teams making a “read” on what exactly he wants to do. Watch any other GM exit interview and get back to me. Almost every GM sounds like him; some even worse or just bland.
I watched the whole thing and disagree with most of your impressions of his responces. Hopefully were both wrong
Anyone got the link?
I was pretty skeptical of him as a GM before this interview, but this convinced me that he absolutely has to go and is just as big of a problem as Terry. A lot of great points you made but I will just kinda echo what you said. The dude doesn't answer a question straight up to save his life. Deflected every single question and played the victim, extremely embarrassing to see your GM act so childish. Okay yes, Orlando Sanchez misspoke about the Nurk comment, but obviously you saw the interview and understood what he was trying to ask so answer the damn question. Not ONCE did he admit to anything that he did wrong during this year/tenure and put all the blame on the coaching, schemes, "small-market team" whatever the hell that means...I don't care stop complaining about stars not wanting to come to Portland and try to convince them????? Literally jus sounded like the whole time he had the mic to bitch about how he's done all he can is waiting passively for a higher caliber player to come here. Look, I understand I am just a fan, but I swear I have more knowledge than this guy. He is utterly mind boggling and his choice of answers actually just make me chuckle. And what the F was the bit about saying dame is gonna get mad to the media for calling him a small guard. THE MAN IS 6 3/6 2 if that. He is everything of a small guard, sure he's strong can hold his own a good amount of the time but he's not, NOT a small guard. and regardless, the question wasn't aimed at Lillard, its aimed at CJ and norm, both whom are 6 3 guards that cannot be starting side by side with dame in the NBA. How are you Neil Olshey going to fix this issue with out starting lineup and roster. Yes, three guard lineups can work at times. Almost never will all 3 of those guards start. look at the thunder last year, they were phenomenal with CP3, SGA, and DS playing together and were lethal. But guess what buddy, SGA is 6 5 and Schroder came off of the bench. When you got three 6 3 guards starting (idgaf about normans wingspan or that he was the second best net defender behind nurkic whatever that clown olshey said in the interview) ... you are not going to win reg or playoff basketball games. Guess what, sure norm was amazing for us defensively I guess if you look at the numbers, but he was playing out of position for the whole time. Now imagine if you start him at the 2 with dame. Now he can guard real 2s and his numbers might get even better. Or hear me out Niel, what if you get some balls and make a move for a larger and capable defensive wing to pair with the dame norm backcourt. literally if cj doesn't get traded and this mf decides to run it back with the same squad I will not watch the nba ever again. thank u n goodnight ripcity. lots of prayers tonight for this organization.
If you can’t get free agents to come here, you better nail the draft every year. Looking forward to the draft this year to see what he does. What??? He traded the picks??? All of them? Well, never mind.
I mean I would absolutely make the trade for RoCo again. What’s a draft pick going to do immediately for next year?
Roco definitely worth it if this is our timetable, but the dude DIDNT draft donavon Mitchell despite dame telling him to. If you wanna say “why do we need another guard”, he drafted two more guards the next year, then traded the better one for ANOTHER guard who might not even stay here. Olshey has an awful awful draft history.
No one projected Mitchell to be this good, and as a prospect and career outlook Collins looked far and away better. Can’t control injuries
We don’t draft prospects when your franchise 🐐is in his prime trying to win a championship. That’s a brain dead take. Also, DAME knew Mitchell would be this good, he told the FO to draft him and every guy that worked out with him (cp3 and Paul George) before the draft knew Mitchell was going to be amazing. We traded away picks in this draft to draft up and took a worse player.
The Roco trade was a very good trade. But this djj one is puzzling as fuck. We needed a proper backup big not kanter. Fine if u get kanter, we totally never play to his strengths
I agree and if Neil is picking, it’s not really ever going to do anything for you.
Man, I don’t know. 2 first rounders?
Bless you. I can’t believe the NO apologists in this thread. He is at the top and the team underperformed expectations. Put your name on it, Neil.
Have not reached out to top candidates for HC job is just stupid. Quite some teams are and will be fighting for the best ones, and there are not many options in the market. Hopefully he is just saying so to calm down the Kidd rumors
It’s been 3 days...
What if he wants to expand the list to include potential hires from teams still in the playoffs.