Lillard's agent making sure he ends up in Miami
Aaron Goodwin has four NBA clients, and he's doing all he can for his top one, Damian Lillard, to get him to Miami.
Joe Cronin has made this more difficult than it needs to be for Damian Lillard and the rest of the NBA. On Saturday, Lillard officially requested a trade from the Portland Trailblazers to the Miami Heat.
That hasn’t happened, yet.
And it appears that much of the national media is appalled that he could end up alongside Jimmy Butler. Much of these guys have gone on TV shows and taken to Twitter (or what’s left of it) and shown why he should end up in Philadelphia or Boston or basically anywhere but Miami.
But there’s at least one person involved, who actually doesn’t need a source, that is contributing to the cause of getting Damian Lillard to the Miami Heat — and that’s his agent Aaron Goodwin.
Goodwin told the Miami Herald’s Barry Jackson this: "I do what I should for my client. Some teams I did call. Other teams have called me. It's a respectful relationship with most teams. Truthfully, he wants to play in Miami. Period."
Hey Joe, did you see the period?
Additionally, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported this in an ESPN+ article today: “Lillard's agent, Aaron Goodwin, has been calling prospective trade partners and warning against trading for his client, team executives told ESPN. Goodwin is telling organizations outside of Miami that trading for Lillard is trading for an unhappy player. As interference goes, this is a time-honored agent maneuver to depress offers and clear a path to a predetermined destination.”
So that would be Miami Heat lifer Aaron Goodwin doing his part to make this happen. The Heat have their offer out there and are waiting for other teams to neglect to make a better offer because of this desire of Lillard.
Will it work? Probably.
How long will it take? That is going to depend on the pride of Joe Cronin.
Barry Jackson added this to the mix as well: “Aaron Goodwin told ESPN’s Marc Spears that Goodwin spoke with Joe Cronin and had a "good discussion today" and "Aaron is hopeful over the next couple days" that the Heat and Blazers "will get in a room and hopefully hash something out" in Vegas.”
Thank you for your service Aaron Goodwin!
Portland fans have every right to be pissed.
1st: Former Portland owner, Paul Allen asked that the franchise be sold when he died. He died in 2018 but his lame ass sister Jody refused to honor his wishes and sell the team.
2nd: The franchise has since gone to shit under Jody. (13th place in the West the last two seasons)
3rd: Before the 2023 draft, the GM (Cronin) promised Dame he would build a contending team around him in 2023-2024.
4th: Cronin overpaid forward Jerami Grant whose apg and rpg are lower than Herro's ($160M/5 years).
5th: Cronin used Portland's highly valued #3 pick to bring in PG Scoot Henderson (Dame's replacement) rather than acquiring a much needed PF/C in trade.
Note: It can be easily deduced that Allen/Cronin never intended to build a contending team around
Dame but intended to rebuild with younger players. It can further be deduced that Allen/Cronin expected Dame to become angry when they drafted Scoot Henderson and demand a trade to a contending team (as Durant, Mitchell, Gobert, and others had done before) and that Portland would receive a treasure trove of young players and draft picks in exchange for Dame.
6th: Dame felt betrayed/lied to by Cronin and Allen and threw a monkey wrench into their plans by demanding to be traded to one of two specific teams, Miami or Brooklyn.
7th: Dame doubled down and demanded to be traded to Miami.
8th: Cronin spins the situation to make Dame look like the bad guy, never admitting his ulterior motive for drafting PG Henerson and failing to use the pick to help build a contending team around Dame.
9th: Blazer fans are mad at the world (Allen, Cronin, Dame, Riley, Heat fans, media, etc.)
Note: I fully understand their frustration and anger. I lived through the same crap with Sarver and McDonough a few years ago with the Phoenix Suns. When a team's owner and GM suck at what they do, the fans have to pay for it. Nothing will improve in Portland until Allen sells and Cronin is replaced by a competent GM.
10th: Meanwhile, the clusterf**k will continue indefinitely and Portland fans will get more frustrated and angrier by the day. I can't blame them.
11th: Good luck to Blazer (and Heat) fans, no matter how this all turns out.
Wow. They're really salty over on the Blazers edge website. It's as if we offered 2 second round picks and 500 bucks.
Dame sucks snd all that.
My how quickly fans can turn on a player. I'm not sure what they're expecting but there is no other team willing to take on Dame's contract without gutting their team.
Cronin acting like a rookie GM with no experience in reading the landscape.