Speaker 1: Break was breaking down all the biggest NBA storylines.
Speaker 2: You're tuned in.
Speaker 3: So the heat Check.
Speaker 2: The Heat Check was just a craky the best podcast
Speaker 2: covering all the trauma around the association. All right, moving on,
Speaker 2: We're gonna be dealing with the aftermath of the Dame
Speaker 2: Willer trade for years to come.
Speaker 3: A year.
Speaker 2: The amount of impact this had on the full league
Speaker 2: is wild. We can't even see it yet, but in
Speaker 2: the immediate aftermath, we've got bad blood people. We have
Speaker 2: got a straight up cold war in the media between Dame.
Speaker 1: And the Blazers.
Speaker 3: It was no love loss.
Speaker 2: When Dame put out his letter to Portland and Joe
Speaker 2: Cronin was not in it, it was not.
Speaker 1: A thank you to Joe.
Speaker 2: Because there have been two detailed breakdowns of the trade,
Speaker 2: and they were published within twenty four hours of each other.
Speaker 2: The first one was Chris Haynes that include did a
Speaker 2: lot of details directly from Dame.
Speaker 3: And his agent Aaron Goodwin.
Speaker 2: And then we got another one from woj which could
Speaker 2: have been written with full access to Joe Cronin's moleskin
Speaker 2: notebook and colored markers. And I'm dead ass serious because
Speaker 2: that was in the story. Two sides of the same
Speaker 2: story how the Dame trade happened, painting completely different narratives.
Speaker 3: Let's start with what.
Speaker 1: Chris Haynes dropped and Dame story.
Speaker 2: Chris Haynes inside the messy divorce between Dame Lillard and
Speaker 2: the Portland Trailblazers.
Speaker 1: Woo, that headline is just right there.
Speaker 2: You'd know what's happening right dropped on Bleacher Report Friday night,
Speaker 2: and it does Thursday night, Thursday night, and it does
Speaker 2: nothing to try and hide how up set Dame was
Speaker 2: by all.
Speaker 1: This and how it went down. And as a.
Speaker 3: Quick aside, I love Haynes, good dude.
Speaker 2: He is as close to Dame as any NBA reporter
Speaker 2: has ever been to a superstar player since the days
Speaker 2: of like Ahmad Rashad and Michael Jordan. So you know
Speaker 2: that this tea is directly from Dame. Here are the
Speaker 2: cliff notes of the Haynes story. One Dame was blindsided
Speaker 2: by the trade Milwaukee. He was on the phone with
Speaker 2: Haynes when the news dropped and all he could all
Speaker 2: he could say was I gotta wrap my mind around this,
Speaker 2: over and over and over again.
Speaker 3: Since July.
Speaker 2: Another thing in the piece, the Blazers refused to talk
Speaker 2: with the Miami Heat at all, which is contrary to
Speaker 2: many media reports. They hadn't spoken since summer league. No
Speaker 2: wonder why Barry Jackson is pissed because people were lying
Speaker 2: all summer. They picked up the phone, asked for BAM.
Speaker 2: When Bam was not available, they said, thank you, good night,
Speaker 2: We're moving on. Next up Goodwin Aaron Goodwin, Dame's agent,
Speaker 2: pressured the Blazers to trade Dame to Miami anyway and.
Speaker 1: Did everything that he could to make it happen.
Speaker 3: He admits to this and thinks that that was the
Speaker 3: right move.
Speaker 2: For approximately two weeks, because of all this Cold War
Speaker 2: status causing text to the Blazers from Damon, Goodwin went unanswered,
Speaker 2: completely ghosted them. Dame and his team let leak the
Speaker 2: fact that Dame was basically asked to sit the final
Speaker 2: ten games of the season, which is just an absolute
Speaker 2: no no.
Speaker 3: They're just literally trying to get the Blazers fined for tanking.
Speaker 2: Somebody pick up the phone and snitch on Adam Silver
Speaker 2: Snitch snitch anyway. Dame also said if he couldn't go
Speaker 2: to Miami, so he reports the camp. Dame or reports
Speaker 2: back to the facility starts training, and he's like, Hey,
Speaker 2: if you can't trade me to Miami, then I want
Speaker 2: to rescind my trade request. What wasn't in the Ayin's
Speaker 2: piece was that he really didn't want to rescind his
Speaker 2: trade request. He mostly just wanted to give him more
Speaker 2: time to get the money Miami deal done.
Speaker 3: And Joe said, I don't know about.
Speaker 1: That, playboy.
Speaker 2: No, the time for the trade request being rescinded is over.
Speaker 2: There's no going back. And Dame apparently was heartsick about this. Also,
Speaker 2: Joe Cronin apparently was not talking to Dame when he
Speaker 2: went back to the facility and started getting up shots
Speaker 2: with the guys.
Speaker 3: Everybody was excited.
Speaker 1: To see Dame. Joe Cronan would not speak to him.
Speaker 3: Dame's very upset about that. Goodwin told Dame privately.
Speaker 2: On September seventeenth, Hey, we need to start looking into
Speaker 2: some other teams. It doesn't look like Miami's avenue. Even
Speaker 2: though he was amping up the public pressure saying that
Speaker 2: Dame will not report anywhere but Miami. If Dame goes anywhere,
Speaker 2: he will ask for a trade somewhere else.
Speaker 3: Only after the league intervened.
Speaker 2: According to Goodwin did Cronan begin communicating again. They had
Speaker 2: to have a group call to be like, hey, it's
Speaker 2: get spicy between you two.
Speaker 3: You guys need to figure it out.
Speaker 2: And Lollard, as a result of all of this, has
Speaker 2: a very sour taste in his mouth about how it
Speaker 2: all went down.
Speaker 3: A lot to unpack here, but the bottom line is
Speaker 3: that the Miami Heat.
Speaker 2: Were never an option for Dame. It just never was
Speaker 2: gonna happen. And Aaron Goodwin worked over time to create
Speaker 2: a miss and disinformation campaign distributed by the Heat in
Speaker 2: particular as well as select media members to try and
Speaker 2: force Portland to do something that they were never going
Speaker 2: to do. Heat fans, I told you this, that deal
Speaker 2: with garbage. Portland was never going to accept it. Tyler
Speaker 2: hero is not enough with a couple of picks and
Speaker 2: a couple of young players for Dame. Lollard, But you
Speaker 2: came for me. You came for me, and the logic
Speaker 2: was sound. And now where you at, now, where you at?
Speaker 3: Now? Where you at now? Sad? That's where you are.
Speaker 2: That's where you are probably enjoying a beach somewhere because
Speaker 2: it's nice there, probably not paying steak tags.
Speaker 3: I Digress twenty four hours.
Speaker 2: Though after Haines dropped the article, the Blazers front office
Speaker 2: responded in the form of booh.
Speaker 1: This is the bomb. This is the sound of the
Speaker 1: Wojes bomb.
Speaker 2: Doesn't see, we don't see. Adrian war Janowski drop articles
Speaker 2: full length Ramona Shelbourne style articles very often, but when
Speaker 2: he does, when he does, they are spicy, and this
Speaker 2: one was spicy. His story was inside the Damian Lillard trade,
Speaker 2: how the Bucks, Blazers and Sons got to the finish line,
Speaker 2: very detailed look into how the Blazers and Bucks and
Speaker 2: Son's perspective was.
Speaker 3: How it came to become a reality. Here are the
Speaker 3: bullet points.
Speaker 1: First up, the Bucks were.
Speaker 2: In on the trade immediately after Damian Lillard requested out.
Speaker 3: That's crazy.
Speaker 2: Remember, it was like, Oh, nobody else wants this deal
Speaker 2: to happen, but Miami, Miami's the only offer.
Speaker 3: Year of gonna get no no.
Speaker 2: John Horse jam of the Bucks immediately called Joe Cronin
Speaker 2: and was like, hey, I got a deal. He told
Speaker 2: Cronan the day Dame demanded a trade that he was
Speaker 2: very interested.
Speaker 1: But made Cronin swear to not leak.
Speaker 2: Anything to anyone, especially to use Drew Holiday to raise
Speaker 2: the price with other teams. Hey don't use me as
Speaker 2: a stocking horse, bitch, or I'm fucking out.
Speaker 1: Okay, That's basically what it was.
Speaker 2: Because from John Horse's perspective, if I get Janis upset
Speaker 2: with me when he's already sprinkling in.
Speaker 3: Little tea, leaves that he might leave the team.
Speaker 2: And Drew Holliday, who's like his brother, gets wind that
Speaker 2: he was in the trade talk and then we don't
Speaker 2: trade him.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we are fucked.
Speaker 2: Horse made it known if the news got out that
Speaker 2: the Bucks would bail immediately, which is why.
Speaker 3: Speaking of which, John Horse.
Speaker 2: Did not inform Jannis at all of the trade d
Speaker 2: tales to get his approval, did it even floated his
Speaker 2: way until it was finished, because he did not want
Speaker 2: to upset Giannis over Drew being traded. That is a
Speaker 2: big balls GM, big boy move. Cronan another detail from
Speaker 2: the piece. Cronan was determined from the beginning to get
Speaker 2: the best deal for Portland, not Dame, but still wanted
Speaker 2: to do right by Dame and died, and the secrecy
Speaker 2: of the deal meant that Cronan not only could not
Speaker 2: trust anyone, especially Dame and his agent, who he knew
Speaker 2: was going to try to sour the deal. He wasn't
Speaker 2: going to tell, hey, Dame, we've got a potential deal
Speaker 2: for you to go to Milwaukee, because by that point
Speaker 2: you start doing a little mass school and you know
Speaker 2: that Drew Holidays in the deal, and then you start
Speaker 2: floating that out and now you're fucked, right, So they
Speaker 2: didn't tell Dame or Dame's agent because they knew they
Speaker 2: were going to try to blow the deal up. They
Speaker 2: even had the framework of the deal in place and
Speaker 2: couldn't tell Phoenix who the young player they were getting
Speaker 2: from the other team was because they didn't want them
Speaker 2: to blow up the deal either. They gave him the
Speaker 2: salary of the player and the type of player he was,
Speaker 2: and they narrowed it down to like Grayson Allen, Victor Oladipo,
Speaker 2: and I think one more So, Phoenix had to trust
Speaker 2: Joe Cronin that he wasn't gonna screw him, and guess
Speaker 2: what he didn't, because when he told them, Hey, the
Speaker 2: deal's done and the player getting is Grace Allen, they.
Speaker 3: Were like absolutely done.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 2: Remember, rumors were that Phoenix wanted to trade Jay Crowder
Speaker 2: to Milwaukee for Grayson Allen and Milwaukee wouldn't do it.
Speaker 2: And the cutest little piece of reporting was that Cronan
Speaker 2: that Adrian Originowski found.
Speaker 3: I don't know why this even came out, but it didn't.
Speaker 3: I thought it was worth mentioning.
Speaker 2: Is that Cronan wouldn't even write down any potential offers,
Speaker 2: any whiteboard, anything that anyone could see passing by. So
Speaker 2: he wrote down all of this stuff in his life
Speaker 2: little moleskin notebook with a blue marker, So now the
Speaker 2: Drew trade was in green marker.
Speaker 1: The whole thing's wild.
Speaker 2: The amount of access to the Asian Wojanowski had to
Speaker 2: Joe Cronin.
Speaker 3: Kind of.
Speaker 2: Substantiates what people in Miami were saying about woj being
Speaker 2: someone on the inside of the Blazers camp kind of
Speaker 2: doing their bidding. But at the same time, Barry Jackson
Speaker 2: and Aaron Finchers were doing Miami's bidding, so I guess
Speaker 2: it balances out. The bottom line, though, is that the
Speaker 2: Bucks were the best option for Dame from the beginning,
Speaker 2: but if a peep got out, the deal was off,
Speaker 2: which makes all the sense in the world. And who
Speaker 2: knows what Dominoes would have fallen because of a busted
Speaker 2: last minute trade. Right, and guess what now we know
Speaker 2: Joe Cronin it's jover trader. Joe can keep a secret
Speaker 2: in the world of NBA front offices. That's gonna go
Speaker 2: a long way. Paging Sam Presty, Paging Sam Presty. Milwaukee
Speaker 2: Bucks and veiled Dame. On Saturday, they had a big
Speaker 2: like Dame is a rye in Milwaukee, to which people
Speaker 2: were there apparently said Dame arrived late by three hours.
Speaker 3: He carried his twins in arm, one in each arm.
Speaker 3: He couldn't glad hand on the way in, really couldn't
Speaker 3: you know?
Speaker 2: Elbow, elbow, wrist, wrist to the crowd, and people were
Speaker 2: making a massive deal out of it.
Speaker 1: They said, Oh, Dame's not exactly happy.
Speaker 2: Oh, not at the same level as DeAndre Ayton when
Speaker 2: he walked into the team's facility. Some people are already
Speaker 2: wondering whether he'll ever be happy in Milwaukee. A lot
Speaker 2: of the conspiracies floating out and about about Damian Lillard
Speaker 2: and his arrival to Milwaukee.
Speaker 1: Let me just tell you from my perspective, though, did
Speaker 1: not love seeing him in a Milwaukee hoodie.
Speaker 3: Did not love seeing a Damian Lillard jersey in Milwaukee.
Speaker 3: Did not like it.
Speaker 1: Did not like it. It made me sick.
Speaker 2: But what's not to be happy about, though, Dame, You
Speaker 2: thought you were going to a place with beautiful scenery,
Speaker 2: sunny and hot weather year round.
Speaker 1: You got eleven it's popping.
Speaker 3: You got a robust beach and nightlife.
Speaker 2: No state taxes, and instead you are still going to
Speaker 2: a contender, but you're going to a place where the
Speaker 2: average temperature in January is like sixteen degrees. The number
Speaker 2: one dance club in the city probably charges a five
Speaker 2: dollars cover fee.
Speaker 1: The state bird is the Mosquito.
Speaker 2: And instead of batties on the beach, you got fatties
Speaker 2: in triple down fat coats. I wasn't supposed to say that,
Speaker 2: wait I did, of course, Dame is.
Speaker 1: Of course he's salty. You know what fixes that up?
Speaker 1: Fixes it right up?
Speaker 3: Money and winning.
Speaker 1: You don't even probably have to go outside.
Speaker 2: You can go from car to car, garage to garage,
Speaker 2: you can go from facility to condo. Because he's not
Speaker 2: gonna live in a house. Milwaukee fans think that Damian
Speaker 2: Lillard's moving to Milwaukee.
Speaker 3: He's not.
Speaker 2: But he wasn't able to do any of that enough
Speaker 2: winning to keep himself happy.
Speaker 3: And he's gonna do all a hell of a lot
Speaker 3: of that in Milwaukee.
Speaker 2: And we know Dame's gonna live in Portland during the summer,
Speaker 2: where it's beautiful and amazing and never rains and it's
Speaker 2: sunny all the time. But it personally breaks my heart
Speaker 2: to know that Dame wanted to come back to Portland
Speaker 2: when it became obvious Miami didn't have any chance to
Speaker 2: get him. But it must have broken Joe Cornin's heart
Speaker 2: to tell him, no, I'm sorry, you can't fly home, baby.
Speaker 1: It's a rap for you. Fly away, baby, bird, fly away.
Speaker 3: I'm crying in the club. I did cry when I
Speaker 3: read my Damian Luller's letter to Portland.
Speaker 2: Cried on the air. Yeah, I did, he said, Hopefully
Speaker 2: I can. I'm about to cry again. Hopefully I can
Speaker 2: return back to a Blazer's uniform.
Speaker 3: And by then you'll forgive me for breaking your heart.
Speaker 1: As I did my own. Woo, my goodness.
Speaker 2: If you don't think this hurt Joe, you don't know
Speaker 2: anything about him. He's been working with the Blazers since
Speaker 2: two thousand and eight. He was close to Dame before this,
Speaker 2: He's really worked hard to do right by Dame, put
Speaker 2: the team's interest first, and he succeeded well. End this
Speaker 2: episode and hopefully never have to talk about this again
Speaker 2: with Dames goodbye. In a very long note, Dame thanked
Speaker 2: a huge list of people from Jody Allen on down,
Speaker 2: of course, not Joe Cronin, and he ended it with
Speaker 2: this soliloquy. I think I mentioned it just a second ago.
Speaker 2: As this chapter of my life ends, I look back
Speaker 2: and realize how special it was. Even in this moment,
Speaker 2: I feel sad we never accomplished what I so badly
Speaker 2: wanted to. I don't cry much, but I know my
Speaker 2: love for you is real, because I'm for sure dropping
Speaker 2: some tears right now. Rip City, you know my heart
Speaker 2: and where I stand because I've stood there for over
Speaker 2: a decade.
Speaker 1: So to have to move off my square hurts my heart.
Speaker 2: As my guy Chief says, one man, don't stop, no show,
Speaker 2: and the show in Rip City must go on without me.
Speaker 2: I do believe a day will come where I put
Speaker 2: on a Blazer's uniform again, and hopefully by then I'll
Speaker 2: be forgiven for breaking your hearts along with.
Speaker 3: My own I'm not crying. You're crying, Damn man.
Speaker 2: Why do you have to do us like that? Don't
Speaker 2: even write that letter. Just go be the villain, Just
Speaker 2: go moving on. You've heard my take on the dame situation.
Speaker 2: Now get ready for.
Speaker 3: The Miami point of view.
Speaker 2: Miami resident and friend of the show, Jonathan Zaslow of
Speaker 2: the Zaslow two point zero podcast is a dedicated heat fan.
Speaker 2: Damn damn man got me crying my damn podcast, and
Speaker 2: he joined me and the crew on bet MG in
Speaker 2: the Night to let me know how Miami reacted to
Speaker 2: the Dame. To Miami News, I was joined by my
Speaker 2: co host Ryan Horvaugh and Nick Ashew. As always, let's
Speaker 2: get right into it.