Thursday night in Brooklyn, dreams come true for 60 young men as they are drafted into the National Basketball Association.
The NBA Draft has been particularly kind to the Portland Trail Blazers in the past few years. In 2012, General Manager Neil Olshey’s first draft in Portland, he hit the jackpot. With the 6th pick, they drafted a point guard from Weber State. What was to follow would change the course of the entire franchise and result in the first Rookie of the Year award for a Blazer since Brandon Roy in 2006-2007, and only the 4th in franchise history.
Drafting Damian Lillard in 2012 was a monumental shifting point for the franchise, but the momentum continued the following season. In the 2013 Draft, Olshey went the small school route again as he drafted CJ McCollum out of Lehigh. After playing in 100 games and only starting 3 in his first two seasons, McCollum broke out in a big way in his third season. So big, in fact, that he was named the NBA Most Improved Player.
Not all draft picks are such homeruns, but Olshey has also obtained Meyers Leonard, Allen Crabbe, and Pat Connaughton in the past few years, through the draft.
Entering the 2016 NBA Draft, the Blazers don’t own a pick. However, that doesn’t mean that they won’t make a pick on Thursday. During a press conference a couple weeks back Olshey said, “We always have a draft pick, we work for Paul Allen. It’s a deep draft, we are always going to be involved when you work for Paul because he’s always looking for an influx of young talent.”
Allen, the owner of the franchise since 1988, has long been enamored by the NBA Draft and the entire draft process. He will regularly attend pre-draft workouts in the Portland practice facility, he is very invested and involved in the draft room, and he loves bringing in young talent.
The two picks in this coming draft that were originally owned by the Blazers are the 19th and 48th picks. The 19th pick was traded to the Denver Nuggets last season in exchange for Arron Afflalo. The 48th pick was sent to Cleveland (and then subsequently sent to Chicago) in 2013 in exchange for Allen Crabbe.
After exceeding expectations this past season, we are all going to see a team that is going to fight to get to the next level. Led by Lillard on the court, and an aggressive front office off of the court, the franchise will take the steps required to continue to build off of the 2015-2016 success.
Like Olshey said, working for Allen makes the draft an important event, whether they currently have a pick or not. This team is going to do their due diligence and make the moves necessary to bring in young talent to help this team. They have the money and assets to work their way into the draft if a player they are targeting falls to a pick they could acquire.
I would predict that by the end of the night on Thursday that the Portland Trail Blazers will make at least one draft pick, and it wouldn’t surprise me whatsoever if they wound up drafting a couple players.
In the next couple days, leading up to the draft, I will identify the needs that the Blazers should be looking to fill, and also which players they may be looking at to fill those needs.
Will Thursday be a franchise-altering day such as the 2012 NBA Draft? I doubt it. But with full faith in the front office and scouting department, I expect it to be a day that could significantly impact this team for years to come.
Stay tuned for Part 2 tomorrow.
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