The Portland Trail Blazers took some big steps this week.
Whether those steps take the franchise to perennial playoff contention or straight off a cliff very much remains to be seen.
The team opened the week by shipping off mercurial scoring guard Anfernee Simons and a pair of second-round draft picks to the Boston Celtics for 35-year-old defensive stalwart Jrue Holiday. They then went on to make a puzzling draft choice in selecting raw Chinese center Yang Hansen. The sum of the two moves is an unclear direction and seemingly opposing motives.
By the time the 2024-25 season ended, it was apparent that the Trail Blazers needed to move on from Simons. As a high-volume shooter, Simons could rack up points, but without the ball in his hands, he didn’t contribute much to the team’s offense while being a detriment on defense.
Trying to fit Simons, Scoot Henderson, and Shaedon Sharpe all on the floor at the same time wasn’t working. While Blazers fans have long appreciated Simons’ tenacity and his ability to knock down stone-cold threes in the clutch, his market was not what the team hoped it would be, even with his expiring contract.
In the end, the Trail Blazers chose to swap him to Boston, reacquiring a player who had never played a game for the team after originally coming over from Milwaukee in the Damian Lillard trade, before being redirected to Boston for a return that included Robert Williams III and a first-round pick. While in Boston, he signed a contract extension that will pay him north of $30 million annually through his age 27 season.
Picking up Holiday is not an inexplicable move on its face. The team clears out minutes for Henderson and Sharpe while acquiring a veteran presence who can help the team strengthen an emerging defense. However, most teams do that by bringing in a veteran on a one-year minimum contract, not by signing a player in the twilight of their career with three years left on an overpriced contract. In making this trade, the Trail Blazers’ front office made clear that it believes the team, which nearly found its way into the play-in tournament last year, is not a mirage and that its growth will continue on the way to a playoff spot.
With three years now committed to Holiday, the team will have to get creative in how to handle the upcoming extensions for Sharpe and Toumani Camara. Meanwhile, a Trail Blazers team that clearly believes it can chase down the teams in front of it next year will also have to be aware of teams like San Antonio, which will be trying to catch up with their own crop of young players.
With Holiday on board, it appeared the team was making moves with the goal of at least being competitive next year and building on a strong finish to potentially qualify for the play-in tournament as soon as next season. The draft presented an excellent opportunity for them to build on that momentum. With a team stocked with guards and centers, the team certainly seemed to be looking for a three-and-d threat to play the 3 or 4 spot and add some additional shooting. When the team traded its original No. 11 pick (Cedric Coward, a rangy wing from WSU) to Memphis for a future first-round pick and the No. 16 pick this year, the team appeared set to have its cake and eat it too. Numerous fits were still on the board at No. 16, and fans were ready to pop the champagne on an epic fleecing by the team’s front office. And then the pick came in.
The team picked 19-year-old Chinese center Yang Hansen, a 7-1 center with a massive wingspan. That’s tantalizing. A scouting report that includes words like “incredibly slow,” “can’t shoot,” and “questionable awareness” is less so.
The pick was universally the surprise of the first round, considering that Hansen, in his most favorable projections, was judged to be a late second-round pick.
The pick was perplexing on just about every level. For a team that made a trade just a few days before trying to push the team into contention, drafting a massive, in every sense of the word, development project, makes very little sense. Yang is coming in with zero experience against anything resembling NBA talent and may be eaten alive if given significant minutes as a rookie. The team will almost certainly be shipping out Williams and Deandre Ayton now, as they were already struggling to find enough minutes to go around in their center rotation. That will leave the team with a center rotation consisting of Donovan Clingan, who showed incredible strides as a defensive center last year but struggled offensively, and Yang, who brings the same liabilities as Clingan, except even more so.
In multiple ways, the Blazers’ front office has bet the house on their moves this week. With new ownership on the way, Joe Cronin and his front office are placing their bets. The problem is that it doesn’t seem like everyone is on the same page on where they should be laying those bets. A team doesn’t trade for a 35-year-old veteran star if it plans to keep rebuilding forever. However, a team trying to get into contention doesn’t spend its only draft pick on a raw, wildcard player no one saw coming.
This week, Joe Cronin and his front office bet their jobs that they are smarter than the entire league.
Blazers fans have to hope they are right about that.
