Front-Office Executive Gives Interview to Local Radio Station
Front-Office Executive Gives Interview to Local Radio Station
Some thoughts on Joe Cronin's Wednesday appearance on 1080 The Fan
Here's a new one: the general manager of the Portland Trail Blazers gave an interview to one of the local radio stations on Wednesday.
Joe Cronin appeared with my good friends Dirt & Sprague at 1080 The Fan, which in and of itself is unbelievable in this market. Even more refreshingly different: Cronin actually had some interesting things to say in this format.
It was a 20-minute spot, and about half of it was the same stuff Cronin has said in various press conferences since he took the job. That's to be expected—someone in his position has their talking points, and isn't going to spill state secrets in a morning-radio interview.
But it was a nice change from the last nine-plus years, when the Blazers' president of basketball operations only begrudgingly gave press conferences when absolutely necessary, and never did sit-down interviews except with state-approved local TV and radio stations and one sympathetic national podcast platform.
It wasn't as bad as Knicks president Leon Rose, who still hasn't made himself available to reporters one time since taking the job almost three years ago, but it wasn't far off. And my own selfish complaints about the ease of doing my job aside, lack of availability really just does a disservice to fans, who fork over money for tickets and jerseys and deserve to hear from the people responsible for putting together the team they're going to see.
In general since early December, the Blazers have become much more media-friendly across the board. I'm still in the process of getting to know Cronin on a personal level, but it's obvious even from our limited interactions that he genuinely cares about the people he works with and isn't obsessed with being the smartest guy in the room at all times. All of his new front-office hires are similar. And the new PR staff has been incredibly accommodating to me since I made this move to go independent.
Even on a day-to-day level as a beat writer, I appreciated last season that Chauncey Billups had no qualms about telling us what his starting lineup was and how many minutes certain players would get. It's always been silly to me when coaches treat that kind of stuff like classified information.
All of that to say, it's nice that Cronin was willing to go on a non-team-affiliated radio station and answer some questions about the roster he's put together in his first full offseason as general manager.
You can listen to the entire interview below, but I've transcribed a few things that stood out to me, topics Cronin hasn't discussed in public before that are worth calling attention to.
