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📔 My Cousin's Moleskine Notebook

📔 My Cousin's Moleskine Notebook

Go Blazers...

October 06, 2023

In this week's P.O. Box:

Joe Cronin making moves
Stream roundup: One more DFS sims show smh
On tap: Block Party, Off & On The Clock, After Dark, Week 5 Cram
On my radar: Walrusballs, Utilization comparison tool

I don’t follow the NBA closely these days (even when my hometown team is making a title run), but when I do, it involves the Portland Trailblazers.

My cousin, Joe Cronin, is their GM and he’s had quite the summer with the specter of a Damian Lillard trade hanging over the franchise.

It’s been surreal to watch Joe become a household name with the Blazers thrust into the national spotlight after pulling off two big trades that altered the NBA landscape.

I used to park on the couch as a pre-teen in the late 90s and watch NBA games all day on Christmas with Joe and now Woj is out here doing his best George R.R. Martin impression while writing about him:

Soon after ending his call with Allen, Cronin opened up his Moleskine journal and jotted notes with his blue marker. For months, in this fist-sized notebook jammed with the secrets of the summer, it had been a blue marker for Lillard trade talks. Four pages for every opposing team -- weeks and weeks of trade conversation notes, deal structures and ideas. Cronin resisted posting trade offers on elaborate whiteboards with magnets and nameplates in his practice-facility office or meeting rooms; too many prying eyes could steal a glance. Everything existed inside that Moleskine and his MacBook.

Joe’s rise to the top of the Blazers organization is honestly incredible.

He moved to Portland in 2006 to take an unpaid internship with the Blazers and reff’d basketball games on the side just to pay rent.

He eventually scrapped his way into a gig as a scout (official title: Scout/Basketball Operations Information Manager) and then made it his life’s mission to memorize the CBA inside and out and become the Blazers in-house salary cap expert.

There’s a cool post on Blazer’s Edge by Ben Golliver from 2010 that describes how it was unfolding:

Cronin has become a go-to person when the group meets to go over details like front-loading a contract offer or checking with the league office on this or that finer point. "His knowledge of the cap has been a tremendous help to both Chad and myself because he knows a lot of that stuff but he if doesn't know it, he will find it out, which makes us feel very comfortable. He's been huge in the last month or so for us."

In 2014, he parlayed his expertise into a new role as Director of Player Personnel, and then later Assistant General Manager in 2021, quickly followed by the interim GM role, before finally being named the franchise’s 11th GM on May 9, 2022.

What’s funny is that Joe wasn’t even the most decorated basketball player in his own home.

He was a successful high school player at Horizon High School and played a little D2 ball at Regis and University of Northern Colorado, but it was his sister Katie Cronin that stole all of the family headlines back in the day.

She was the top woman’s high school player in Colorado in 1994, led Colorado State to a 104-21 record alongside Becky Hammon from 1995-1999, and played professionally for a handful of years.

Even more interesting, is how both of my cousins’ lives have intertwined with the ultimate Denver basketball legend, Chauncey Billups.

The same year that Katie won “Ms. Basketball” in Colorado, Billups won “Mr. Basketball.”

And that same year, my cousin Joe’s Horizon team squared off against Billups and George Washington High School in the Colorado state championship game:

Joe going for a layup with Billups defending

It did not go well for Joe. He missed two dunks. He got a technical foul for “snapping the rim” and ended up fouling out.

But the real insult to injury was Billups specifically punking him in the game:

Then early in the second half came the play that is still talked about today, and that would later be linked to Kobe Bryant.

Billups was inbounding under his own basket, and the Hawks were playing a zone out-of-bounds defense.

“They are fronting everybody,” Billups said. “And the guy who is guarding me turns his back, to see what is going on.”

The guy who turned his back guarding him? Cronin.

“Cardinal sin,” Cronin said. “Turned my back to the ball. Next thing you know, I feel a thump off my back.”

Billups had thrown his inbounds pass off the back of Cronin.

“That’s what you learn on the street,” Billups said. “That’s a street-ball type thing.”

Startled and confused by the thump on his back, Cronin swirled around.

“I turned and Chauncey was raising up and dunking it,” Cronin said. “That’s playing the game the way it needs to be played. I thought it was smart of him.”

Flash forward almost two decades and Joe is the GM of the Blazers and Chauncey is the head coach.

Even back when Billups was still playing, he always wondered what Joe was up to when he came to Portland:

“Every time I came into town to play them, I would look for Joe,” Billups said. “I was like, ‘Yo, where is Joe Cronin at?’ But all of the years doing that, I hadn’t seen this dude. Never seen him. Never. Never seen him even once…I was 10 years into my NBA career, and I was looking at the front offices around the league, and I see Joe Cronin’s name,” Billups remembered. “And I wondered to myself: Is that the Joe Cronin? So I started asking questions. And I wanted to see a picture. I wanted to see if this was actually Joe.”

If you are enjoying this, I definitely recommend reading the entire Athletic article that tells the story of how their lives have come full circle.

It’s truly rare for me to sweat anything in sports that doesn’t involve fantasy or gambling, but this Blazers offseason has caused me to break my cardinal sin of emotionally investing in sports.

I bounced around my living room during the lottery hoping they could bink the No. 1 overall pick and Victor Wembeanya and fist-pumped when they snuck into the Top 3, which ultimately allowed them to add the other top prize in the draft, Scoot Henderson.

And the past week or so, I’ve been maniacally refreshing X, checking out trade reactions and grades (spoiler: he smashed it), laughing at the memes, and laughing even harder at the meltdowns and temper tantrums from the childish Miami media who apparently think Tyler Herro is bound for the Hall of Fame.

It will be fascinating to see how these moves play out for the Blazers over the coming years. Smart, savvy rebuilds that require a long view are not always kind to their architects (just ask Sam Hinkie and Sashi Brown).

I guess you can call me a “hoops guy” after all, because I’ll be watching closely.

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