r/ripcity

2025-2026 NBA All-Rookie teams:

First team: Cooper Flagg, Dylan Harper, Kon Knueppel, VJ Edgecombe, Cedric Coward

Second team: Ace Bailey, Jeremiah Fears, Collin Murray-Boyles, Maxime Raynaud, Derik Queen

I don't know how else to interpret it. The new owner has come in, has intentionally antagonized the fan base, has slashed costs without any evident thought about the effects, and has started making the franchise radioactive to any free agents or trade targets (as if that wasn't already hard).

All of this combined with the immediate and persistent rumors that he is looking to move the team to a market that he favors. It seems pretty clear that he's engineering the conditions that would lead to a team's relocation.

This is chapter-and-verse the movie *Major League*. The only thing we need is a cardboard cut-out of him that will eventually be stripped down to him in a provocative bikini with little bits taken off after every win.

Hello Tom. I am a Portland Trailblazers fan from Wichita Kansas. I have 0 experience coaching basketball, and honestly I watch football more often. I hear you are concerned about the price required to replace a halfway decent interim coach and I would like to throw my name in the ring. Have you ever watched the show Ted Lasso? A guy from Wichita who had no experience turned a soccer club franchise around despite the owner not giving a rats ass and I am here to offer the same possibility. I do not require payment, all I ask is that I be able to bring my sleeping bag into Moda center so I don’t have to commute cross country every day. I will steal practice balls from local kids playing in the park, and I will raid an overseas jersey factory for our uniforms. I will Offer free agents stock options for contracts, and I will paint dish rags black so fans have something to wave around on game day. I will trade players away rather than risk entering any luxury tax brackets, and I will also wear a Carolina Hurricanes jersey during games so your other team gets free publicity. Thank you for taking the time to read this since you fired the assistant that would normally read this for you, and I hope to hear from you soon! My email is ilovebillionares@gmail.com, and you can DM me on instagram, where my handle is feedtherich8492.

With love,
Wichita Blazers fan

Optimistically let’s say DC grinds it out hard over the offseason, comes back next year and can handle smallball lineups. Do you think it will be through doing what he does best, even better? Or by working on where he gets exposed so he is no longer exploitable?

Option 1- DC develops as a putback finisher and efficient scorer at the rim through improved physical strength and working on his touch and footwork around the basket, while continuing to distinguish himself as the best offensive rebounder in the league. End result is him crushing the glass and presenting a problem opponents must solve- that is, he demands opponents play a traditional big because smaller guys simply get eaten alive and he kills them too hard on the boards. Here the thought is he simply leans into his strengths to the degree that it abuses the weaknesses of trying to go small against him. He makes opponents struggle to go five-out or small against him because he simply bludgeons his way through them and uses his size to dominate the paint, if opponents can’t keep him off the glass and he’s able to convert that to points, that was basically how the young Rockets team excelled with limited spacing for the last couple years, because they dominated the rebound battle so hard.

Option 2- DC improves as a defender in space and with an additional offseason of dedicated conditioning and agility work, he continues to lean into his body transformation in an attempt to be able to step out and recover, working to be more like Gobert who has managed to develop to a fairly effective perimeter defender while still being as elite a rim protector as they get. While he will always have physical limitations, better judgement for how to position himself in terms of what type of cushion he can afford and still challenge, how to step up and being better about when he needs to move pre-emptively, part of it would have to being a little quicker on his feet and part of it would have to be developing better decision making and playing coverages as perfectly as he can within what his body will allow. Essentially the idea is that he improves at his weakness such that he is no longer as much of a matchup specific big, but is able to better defend against a variety of schemes and still be effective.

I saw the news about Casey Holdahl and the Blazers layoffs, so this morning I checked the Real GM website, which has a comprehensive list of all current team employees, and for the Blazers, Casey is no longer on there (I know Casey use to be on there because I remember checking that site after the Chauncey Billups stuff went down and Casey Holdahl’s name was one of the few I recognized near Chauncey’s)

https://basketball.realgm.com/nba/teams/Portland-Trail-Blazers/24/staff-members/Current/player

I also noticed that Lamar and Kevin are listed, while Brooke, Chad Doing, Neil Everett, and Tom Haberstroh are not listed amongst current employees.

I’m curious if anyone here whom may have referred to this site feels it’s a complete comprehensive list of all employees and might be a sign of what may be soon announced, or if it doesn’t always list some names?

People complained about Jody Allen so much that now we got an owner who completely ruined the team.

...to have some 'reporting in safe' info from Brooke, Kevin, Lamar and Travis (and plenty of others). I'm a wreck thinking about the possibilities.

When I heard 70 people were laid off, like many of you, I was very concerned about the new ownership. Then I read that 70 was 20% of the staff. Most NBA teams have 200-400 people on staff. If 20% of the Trail Blazers staff is 70 that means they had 350 people on staff. The new total would be somewhere around 220.

I know there is no Blazers ball right now and some of you have nothing else to talk about. But all the pessimism around Tom, all the threads about how he is “cheap” seem so deranged and like I am in a Real Housewives subreddit - Not an NBA subreddit. I’m checking out until October. I hope you all enjoy your summer and GO BLAZERS!