Gone are the days of championship runs and overspending for high-priced free agents. And in their wake is a franchise spinning its wheels on a road fraught with the wreckage of small-market teams, playing a big-market game.
Winter is coming. True, if you watch Game of Thrones, but equally accurate when referencing the plight of a city and franchise calculating the future that lies squarely in the hands of its best player.
LaMarcus Aldridge has roughly 2 weeks until he can either chase a ring with a ready-made contender or cash-in with a team and franchise desperately looking for a way to get in the mix.
It’s been 15 years since Portland made a conference finals and more than 20 since they lost to Michael Jordan’s Bulls in the NBA Championship. But this isn’t your father’s Portland Trail Blazers, and it is unquestionably not his NBA. The game has changed and in the process diminished the chances of cities like Salt Lake City, Milwaukee, and yes … Portland, Oregon of winning professional basketball’s biggest prize. And due to such, Aldridge and stars like him are forced to look elsewhere to reach their ultimate goal.
This is where people scream from the rooftops about small-market teams like San Antonio and Oklahoma City, and how “If they can do it, then we can too!” Not really. While the aforementioned teams have and are in fact contenders, for every Spurs or Thunder of the league, I’ll throw the Bucks, Jazz, Kings, Bobcats, and even Magic as examples of franchises mired in the mediocrity the league buries alive.
Occasionally an outlier will make its way into the fray, but to do so you need either a transcendent star acquired through the draft. A big-ticket free agent to sign on the dotted line. Or a perfect storm of chemistry, paired with a great coach and a couple second-tier talents mixed in. Portland, due to its relative success, can’t do it through the draft. Due to its relatively small size, can’t attract free agents. And Coach Tery Stotts – while I like him – doesn’t qualify as “great,” and would need to be as the roster is currently constituted.
Aldridge is the key. While an all-star and very good player, LaMarcus doesn’t have the talent or the personality to take a team to a championship level on his own. He needs Lillard to improve, both defensively and via a heightened level of game management. He needs a deeper, more dependable bench. And he desperately needs a third cog in the starting rotation who’s both dependable on a nightly basis, and provides the type of attitude this team has lacked since players like Brian Grant and Buck Williams manned the paint. The Nic Batum experiment is over. And while I’m convinced he could be a great role player on a championship team, role players don’t make $11 million, and after 7 seasons of inconsistent, passive, and downright frustrating play; I think we know a role player is all he’ll ever be.
So where can this team realistically go?
In a perfect world: You re-sign Aldridge, giving him either the 2-year deal the upcoming collective bargaining agreement lends itself to, or the long-term lucrative contract no other team can match. You then hope that the prospect of an Aldridge/Lillard combination can either attract an otherwise disinterested free agent, or help facilitate a trade (likely involving Nicolas Batum) for the type of edgy presence referenced above. You hang onto Robin Lopez, hope CJ McCollum becomes who he looked like he could at the end of last season, then establish a legitimate bench you can count on when your stars don’t have it. It’s been years since Portland’s bench was legit, and injuries and fatigue are direct results of the type of ineptitude we’ve seen on it of late. Meyers Leonard is coming around, I believe in McCollum, but Dorell Wright, Allen Crabbe, and Steve Blake brought little to nothing to the table last year, and need to be upgraded if this team is to take a step forward. And who knows what Wesley Matthews can offer following his Achilles tear. Great guy. Great teammate. But for a guy his age, with that injury, and looking for the type of money he’s looking for, he may be a gamble Portland may not want to take.
In an imperfect world: Aldridge re-signs, Lillard plays roughly the same game with the slight upgrade age and experience affords, and you run with the relatively same core of guys and a handful of equal trade-offs. Keeping a few from the lot of Wright, Blake, Lopez, Afflalo, and Freeland, and adding a couple of the middle-tier journeymen Portland has become famous for in recent times. Maybe you re-sign Matthews at a reasonable rate, and he gives you a solid contribution via a slightly diminished version of himself, and the leadership he’s always provided. Exciting it isn’t, but it keeps you competitive and maybe a mid-season Batum trade ends in your favor.
Nuclear option: Aldridge jets for greener pastures, Matthews never recovers, you lose Lopez and Afflalo to free agency, and you’re left with a starting line-up of Lillard, McCollum, Batum, Kaman/Leonard, and a power forward to be named later. In the wake of such a disaster, Lillard becomes disinterested and wants out when his contract’s up, and Batum forces a mid-season trade which affords you little in return based on the leverage lost due to his well-known desire to get out.
An unlikely scenario, but not THAT unlikely based on the universe which revolves around a potential Aldridge departure.
This isn’t the 90’s; free agents don’t look at Portland as a top-tier locale, and the luxury tax, coupled with Paul Allen’s disinterest in doing so, has suffocated the ability to buy players to Portland. If Aldridge leaves, things could get interesting. But if he stays, it remains an uphill battle for the front office to build a team capable of taking the next step, in the type of place the NBA’s structure has put squarely behind the eight-ball.
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