The Portland Trail Blazers are eliminated from the 2024 NBA playoffs, but they still have plenty to play for over the regular season’s final month. The team will be facing many important questions this offseason, and the best time for them to begin figuring out the answers to those questions is before the offseason even begins. Here are three things to watch as the Blazers run out the clock on the 2024 season.
1. Who coaches the Blazers next season?
When Chauncey Billups was hired as the head coach of the Blazers three years ago, he came into an established locker room filled with veterans with expectations that he would help the team get over the final hurdle in the NBA playoffs. Instead, the Blazers saw the team fall apart, eventually trading franchise icon Damian Lillard as well as cornerstone Josef Nurkic. This year’s team was filled with many new faces and largely torn down to the studs. It was a chance to finally put his stamp on the team and see what he could do with a team unburdened by expectations. At best, the results have been mixed. The team obviously has not won a ton of games, mainly because it was not built to win, but they still have yet to develop a cohesive identity on offense or defense, and many of the pieces have struggled to gel. However, there have been some glimmers of hope down the stretch with Deandre Ayton on a hot streak and trade deadline addition Dalano Banton carving out a key role. However, those have been matched by top-five pick Scoot Henderson struggling in his first NBA season and fellow first-round pick Kris Murray spending most of his time on the Rip City Remix, unable to even break onto a bench role at the NBA level. Next year is the final guaranteed season on Billups’ contract, with 2025 being an option year. Most teams don’t want a coach on a lame-duck contract coaching a team, and coaches don’t typically like to be placed in that situation, either. However, the Blazers don’t operate as a typical team, so no one can really know if they want to give Billups one more to figure things out or decide if they have seen enough and want a new voice to start the next phase of the rebuild.
2. Can Deandre Ayton be the man?
Ayton was the gemstone of the players the Blazers acquired in the Lillard trade—a potential franchise center with a sky-high ceiling. However, the inconsistencies that dogged his time in Phoenix also plagued him for much of his first season in a Blazers uniform. Lately, however, he seems to have put it all together, tallying double-doubles in points and rebounds in eight of the past nine games. That stretch included a season-high 33 points to go along with 19 rebounds in a win over Atlanta on March 13. It’s his best stretch of the season, and it comes just in time to quiet doubters and maybe give the Blazers front office clarity going forward. Ayton has two years left on his contract and has just gone from playing some of the worst basketball of his career early in his Portland tenure to some of his best over the last few weeks. If he’s happy and playing well, the Blazers have a building block to rely on over the next few years, and the team can start realistically looking at the playoffs. If he’s not, the rebuild has the potential to go on for the foreseeable future.
3. How do their draft picks and recent acquisitions close out the year, and how do they influence their draft decisions?
The Blazers hit a clear fork in the road last offseason, continue trying to build around Lillard, or build around a lottery pick. The Blazers picked the latter path, and Henderson was brought in as the heir apparent. While Lillard immediately starred in the league, Henderson has had his struggles, both with injuries and inconsistent play. Lillard also benefited from starting his career with a solid supporting cast and a veteran NBA coach. Henderson received the benefit of neither. As the team tries to find its footing, they appear to have stumbled onto a few diamonds in the rough. Dalano Banton came over at the trade deadline for the money-in-the-couch cushions cost of a protected future second-round pick. He has since played very well, averaging over 14 points a game in his time with the Blazers. Second-round pick Toumani Camera has excelled as a defensive stopper this season and could find a role as the type of player every team needs to have on their bench.
There is undoubtedly a big difference between being a good player on a good team and being a player earning big stats in the equivalent of garbage time on the season. The Blazers will need to figure out which contributors are real and which are a mirage, all while losing games down the stretch to improve their draft position. Currently, the Blazers would hold the fifth pick in the draft, assuming they don’t get lucky or unlucky in the lottery ping pong balls. They also have a top-four protected first-round pick from the Golden State Warriors, who currently hold the last play-in spot in the Western Conference. It would be great if the Warriors went on a late-season swoon so the Blazers could have a shot at another lottery pick, but the odds are that will be no better than a mid-round pick at best. While they can’t control where that Warriors pick lands, they can do their best to control where their pick does. That means the players and coaches whose future fates may be decided in the final month will have to put their best foot forward while the team continues to lose games to get the best draft position possible.
