But don’t worry; the bleeding will stop soon enough when the season ends on April 14th.
The hits seem to keep on coming:
- The 1st winless month in franchise history, zero wins in February
- The dubious distinction of only being the 2nd team in NBA history to start 5 rookies -&-
- Ten straight losses, including a 60-point drubbing by the Miami Heat in the Portland Trail Blazers last game in March, which was Portland’s 2nd loss by 60 or more this season & their 2nd losing streak of at least nine games
As cruel as this season has been, an April Fool’s joke it is not. As much as I wish it were, no one is laughing cause losing sucks! I want to be very clear about this.
I don’t think I’ve ever been this disinterested in a Trail Blazers team. Apathy for a fanbase can be a slippery slope. Writing about this team has also been a challenge, but it is one of my own creations. If I don’t think I have something worthwhile to say, I won’t bother. This, after all, is the longest I’ve gone between articles.
Yes, losing does suck. There aren’t any ifs, ands, or buts about it. And yet, it has been purposeful. This rebuild was overdue. Unbeknownst to the most loyal of Blazer fans, we were dying a slower and more painful death. The Portland Trail Blazers would not win a championship with Damian Lillard as the fulcrum. They just weren’t!
And as much as I love Dame Time, Father Time will eventually chew him up and spit him out. It will get ugly for Lillard, just as it has for every NBA player who has laced them up. While his knees were shot, Brandon Roy was great until he wasn’t. The same will be true for Damian Lillard, and he likely will still be making a crap ton of money when this happens.
Thank goodness the Milwaukee Bucks are now on the hook through the 2026-27 season, when Dame will have a player option for $63,228,828. Yowsers! Good luck to them or any other team trying to chase a championship while paying a past-his-prime Lillard that much cake.
Already, he seems as averse as ever to playing defense, which is precisely why Damian Lillard hadn’t and likely never was going to lead a championship parade through Portland.
Think of this season then as the band-aid just being ripped off rather than the slow bleed I’ve just outlined for you. This, my friends, is what the bottom looks like. We can only go up from here! And there are signs of progress, even a blueprint of sorts. Two teams we can fix our gaze upon to inform both the present and the future of our beloved franchise. This is an opportunity to avert our eyes from this car wreck of a season.
Exhibit A is “The” Process that laid the groundwork for the Trail Blazers’ current undertaking, the intel for which comes courtesy of Sam Quinn of CBS Sports:
“For three seasons, then-general manager Sam Hinkie [of the Philadelphia 76ers]built rosters that were designed to lose in the hopes that the lottery picks that would come out of all of that losing would eventually lead Philadelphia back to the top of the NBA.”
Stop me if the beginning of the next sentence sounds eerily familiar [‘Italicized Emphasis Added’]:
“[Hinkie’s] goal was to get ‘a… team that had spent the decade before his hiring hovering around .500’ a couple of All-Stars as a launching pad into genuine title contention.”
I haven’t seen this level of tanking before or since. Hinkie, in essence, was waving double birds in the League Office’s face. Landing “a couple of All-stars” was akin, literally and figuratively, to winning the lottery, and he was dead set on giving his team as many chances as possible to hit it big. And he didn’t give two shits who he alienated in the process. Here are a couple more juicy tidbits from Sam Quinn:
A one… “[During the 2015-16 season] the NBA ha[d]grown so fed up with Hinkie’s losing that it… essentially forced Jerry Colangelo upon the team as a senior adviser.” [The Association also would eventually reform the draft lottery to deter such blatant losing.]
And a two… “[Hinkie also] built contentious relationships with agents due to his refusal to sign veterans.”
But even with all of this consternation, Hinkie did deliver. His process, “The” Process, netted Joel Embiid, an NBA MVP, and Ben Simmons, pre-back injury and yips, an All-NBA (3rd Team 2020) & 2x NBA All-Defensive 1st team (2020, 2021) performer. Mission accomplished!
The Blazers ‘Process’ began (unofficially) with the promotion of Joe Cronin. His cupboard, however, wasn’t completely bare. After flirting a bit with retooling, injuries provided the necessary motivation for some obvious tanking during the 2021-22 & 2022-23 seasons. But before said tanking netted him and his Cronies Shaedon Sharpe and Scoot Henderson, they had already drafted Anfernee Simons and locked him in as a potential building block with a 4-year extension right after drafting Sharpe.
If you’re searching for a ray of sunshine to pierce the storm clouds of this Portland Trail Blazers season, look no further than Ant. He is “The” Aladdin. In his 1st season sans Dame, his age 24 season, he’s averaged 22.6 pts on 43% shooting, including 3.4 3pm on a 3P% of 38.5%, 5.5 ast, 3.6 reb, & 0.5 stl. Not too shabby!
In Lillard’s age 24 season, his third year in the league, he averaged 21 points on 43.4% shooting, including 2.4 3pm on a 3P% of 34.3%, 6.2 ast, 4.6 reb, and 1.2 stl. Pretty comparable, right? But at a fraction of the cost.
Simons is making $24,107,143 this year, while Damian Lillard is making $45,640,084. The best part is that Anfernee Simons is 24, and Dame is 33. That’s a savings of $21,532,941 and 9 years for this comparably raw statistical production.
Now, before you go all apples to oranges on me, let’s check in with Lillard to see how he’s doing this year – 24.6 pts on 42.6% shooting, including 3.1 3pm on a 3P% of 35.8%, 7 ast, 4.4 reb, & 1.1 stl. Not so apples to oranges is it!? And we still don’t know how much better Ant is going to get.
The same could also be said for Shaedon Sharpe and Scoot Henderson, although Sharpe, at the tender age of 20, is already pretty damn good (The Next Man Up, Exhibit 1A.) Add to them two more lottery picks after this season, and Portland will have given itself four chances to hit it big, with Simons knocking on the door.
Another tenant borrowed from the 76ers, “Process,” has a great developmental coaching staff. This was Brett Brown’s specialty, and thus far, it appears to be a strong suit of HOF’s Chauncey Billups and his staff. The team’s young players are improving, but more importantly, the team has been competitive.
Since The Bludgeoning of early January (when they were without The[ir] Defensive Anchor), so from January 17th to the present, the Trail Blazers have only won 11 games but have only lost by an average of 12.3 points, IF you flush the aforementioned drubbing by the Heat. And it absolutely should be flushed! I’d be shocked if the team even watched cutups from this game.
This calculus does include a 37-point loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves on February 15th, perhaps due to a Valentine’s Day hangover, if that even is a thing. If you flush this game as well, the team’s competitiveness is even more impressive, dropping their average margin of defeat nearly a whole point to 11.35.
Considering the number of injuries the Blazers have dealt with this season, this is impressive stuff. It also puts to rest whether Coach Billups still has the team’s attention. He and his staff obviously have been very purposeful in their approach. While the losing does suck, this by no means has been a lost season.
And for those of you who think the Portland Trail Blazers can’t win with three guards leading the charge, I’d point you to Exhibit B, the Oklahoma City Thunder, as a potential blueprint for them to follow.
Before adding Chet Holmgren to the mix this season, OKC went 40-42 last year on the strength of Shai-Gilgeous Alexander’s breakout, Josh Giddey’s continued development, and Jalen Williams putting the rest of the league on notice in his rookie season after the All-Star break. Williams scored 18.6 points on 54.6% shooting, including 1.2 3pm on a 3P% of 42.9%, 5.4 reb, 4.3 ast, and 1.7 stl.
Last year, these three guards were joined in the starting lineup by another guard, Lugentz Dort, and a revolving door of “Big” men. Pretty much all of them were more forward than center, including Jaylin Williams, Aleksej Pokusevski, and Jeremiah Robinson-Earl.
Portland, even as soon as next season, could follow suit and become a .500-ish ballclub, IF Anfernee Simons breaks out, Scoot Henderson continues to develop, and Shaedon Sharpe puts the league on notice in his 3rd year.
And by the following season (2025-26), Alex Sarr or Donovan Clingan as sophomores, if either are drafted by the Trail Blazers in 2024, may be ready to fill the Chet Holmgren-esque role for the Blazers. Or better still, their current defensive anchor, DeAndre Ayton, figures out how to become consistently dominant over the next two seasons and finally delivers on his immense potential. The only thing standing in his way presently from becoming DominAyton is himself, so here’s to hoping he can get out of his own way. If not, hopefully, the Portland Trail Blazers will have Sarr or Clingan to turn to.
Portland just isn’t as far off as all the losing this season suggests. Better health alone next season could have them vying for the Play-In.
Well done as always my son😁