The Portland Trail Blazers made no secret of their plans for the 2024-25 season. They want to tank. They are built to do it with a poorly constructed roster, a pile of future draft picks, and a coach without even a concept of an offensive plan.
Tanking is all well and good. It’s even necessary for a mid-market team like Portland to set itself up for future success. But there must be a plan to come out on the other side. Tanking for tanking’s sake leads nowhere.
At this point, it’s fair to question if the Blazers do, in fact, have a plan to come out the other side.
Right now, the plan seems to be to lose enough games, hope the magic ping pong ball fairy gives you the No. 1 overall pick, and then magically become good again.
That’s not a plan.
That’s hope.
And while hope is nice to have, it’s not a plan.
If the Blazers had a plan, it should be to figure out what they have in a potential young core of Scoot Henderson, Shaedon Sharpe, and Donavon Clingan. You can put that group on the floor while continuing to lose games and have an idea of what you need to do to be successful in the future.
That’s not what is happening, though.
Instead, coach Chauncey Billups randomly subs out his players who badly need court time in favor of trotting veterans who are not invested in the team’s future or who are actively inhibiting its growth.
Whether the team believes Scoot Henderson can develop into an all-star or not, they will not find out if he doesn’t play. If last season was the time to gently dip Henderson into the shallow end of the NBA pool while wearing water wings, this year should be the time to push his development and get him into the deep end.
Instead, through 19 games this season, Henderson’s minutes per game are actually down from last season. Instead of playing their No. 3 draft pick more, he’s sitting on the bench. If the Blazers were pushing for a playoff spot or a championship-caliber team that doesn’t have the minutes to spare for a second-year player, that would be understandable. But they are a team that is flailing about near the bottom of the standings. Get the kids on the floor.
The team doesn’t seem to trust him to do anything when he is on the floor. His shot attempts, three-point attempts, and free throw attempts are all down from last season.
While Shaedon Sharpe has stepped into a bigger role due to injuries, his minutes per game are also down this year.
The only future contributor to the team who has increased their minutes per game this year is Tounami, who is playing over five minutes more per contest than last year and has seen his stats grow to match.
Camara, Henderson, Clingan, Sharpe, and Deni Avdija control this team’s future. It may sound harsh, but everyone else is essentially chaff.
The biggest problem is that the team seems not inclined toward developing those players in the team’s future. At this point, it is unclear what Billups is doing here. He was not hired to coach a rebuilding team. He was hired by a previous regime to try to push a Damian Lillard-led team across the finish line. Then, the team traded Lillard and switched course. Now, Billups is guiding the team through a rebuild. That would be the perfect opportunity for a coach to put their stamp on the team. Instead, the Blazers have no defensive identity, surrendering the ninth most points per game this season, and have no offensive identity, ranking near the bottom of the league in three-point attempts per game and ranking 27th in field goal percentage.
When you have coached a team for years, and they can’t play defense, don’t shoot enough, or shoot effectively when they do shoot, that’s a problem.
It would be one thing if the Blazers had an offensive system or a philosophy and just couldn’t execute it because of player turnover. However, they don’t even have that. They are not a volume three-point shooting team, the current vogue in the NBA, nor do they have a pick-and-roll attack or inside-out attack to feature their post players. They have an effective distributing big man in Clingan, but he’s often sitting in favor of Deandre Ayton, a player who looks lost or disinterested when the ball is not in his hands.
As the calendar turns to 2025, it’s time for the Blazers to focus on figuring out the next step in the plan. They have a young core, it’s time for them to be on the floor together and be on the floor often. If Billups is not the right person to lead the next phase, it’s time for him to go. If players like Jerami Grant, Anfernee Simmons, Ayton, and Robert Williams don’t have a future with the team, it’s time to trade them for future pieces.
All those things can be accomplished while still losing games, but at least those losses will mean something, and the team will be better off for it in the end.
Be the first to comment