With all due respect, I think this is an awful take- but that’s just my opinion of course.
I think it’s fair to say that since being drafted by Portland, Dame wanted to make it work in Portland. Badly. He wasn’t one of these starry eyed young players who get drafted by one of the smaller market teams in the NBA and almost immediately start plotting an escape with their agent in an attempt to land with a larger market team behind closed doors. Look at Donovan and even Hayward as perfect examples of what Dame isn’t.
Dame didn’t refuse contract extensions and enter free agency simply because he never wanted to leave. He wanted to stay in Portland and win in Portland. In the meantime, he made several All-NBA teams which inflated his earning potential. Was he supposed to be the first player in NBA history to say “No thanks, please don’t give me all that money.”?
I’m sure once Portland secured the #3 overall pick in this year’s draft, Dame and his management wanted to see what route Portland was going to take from there. Maybe Portland wanted to draft Scoot and start a rebuild, or maybe they tried to leverage the pick in a trade in order to bring in veteran talent and make one more run with Dame but the right offer never presented itself. Either way, once Scoot was selected and it was clear that the window of Portland contending during the Dame era was officially over, Dame had a decision to make.
In hindsight. if Dame is guilty of anything, it’s hanging in with Portland for too long. He should have made this demand 2-3 years ago, but I believe it’s because the dude genuinely wanted to only play for 1 team his entire career and win a title there. Now he’s on a compressed time schedule and is trying to force his way to a team that he feels presents his best chance to win a title in what little time he has left. Does that make him an *******? I certainly don’t think so but a lot of people are certainly gonna feel differently.