This has been quite the summer of change for the Portland Trail Blazers and their fans. LaMarcus Aldridge is in San Antonio, Wesley Matthews is in Dallas, Robin Lopez is in New York, and Nicolas Batum is in Charlotte, leaving Damian Lillard as the only starter from the previous two seasons still on the roster.
Even the reserves are mostly new, as Steve Blake is in Brooklyn, Arron Afflalo is in New York, Alonzo Gee is in New Orleans, while Joel Freeland and Dorell Wright are currently unsigned free agents.
Quite a startling change to say the least, for any fans of the previous lineup or just roster continuity, in general. The public outlook on this new young team is difficult to gauge, but seems to lie somewhere between “the sky is falling” and “I won’t hold my breath”. While this is expected to be just the groundwork being laid for what hopefully becomes a contender, questions abound as to the team’s future, the most important being if and how this new roster will gel, what are fair expectations for this season, and what is the five year plan?
To tackle these tough questions and more, OSN’s Roundtable crew discusses where the team is headed in 2015-16 and beyond. Contributors will be Casey Mabbott (CM), Abe Asher (AA), Garrett Thornton (GT), and Patrick McEachern (PM).
- Opinions vary on the ability of this young roster, so young in fact that Damian Lillard could be the oldest starter at age 25. What’s your outlook for this season?
(CM) I believe this team can win 30 games, and may even get to 41, they’re going to be high energy, fast on their feet, and fun to watch. But there are going to be a lot of head scratching mistakes so it’s important to remember that this is year one of the rebuild, have fun with it and find optimism, but don’t expect too much. This team isn’t going to win against the elite teams, but they can have some fun matchups with the non-elites. Some folks may see this team as a doormat that can’t hope to win 20 games, others may see moderate success this year as a bad thing and would rather the team turned to the dark art of tanking for a lottery pick next year. I would remind them that we’ve been surprised by young and/or unfamiliar lineups before, and that this is a 3-5 year project. It’s fine to wish for a chance at the best amateur players sporting Trail Blazer jerseys, but before you wish for tanking to get them, review the records of the teams in the lottery in 2015, 8 of the 14 teams won 30 or more games, including OKC which won 45. So have fun, enjoy the wins you can get, and don’t take the losses too hard. Even if this team surprises some by approaching the .500 mark, the odds are substantial that you will get a blue chip player next season just by missing the playoffs. Another thing to remember is that this new roster has 5 lottery players already on it (Lillard, Leonard, McCollum, Noah Vonleh, and Al-Farouq Aminu), it’s important to let those guys play games honestly and find out if you have a home run hitter or two. If they just can’t win as assembled, sure, a lottery pick never hurts.
(AA) It’s interesting. This Blazers team will see a regression from the last year, but just how big that regression is remains to be seen. On one hand, the total tonnage of identity, proven talent, and veteran presence lost makes it laughable to suggest the Blazers will be anything but hopeless next year at the beginning of a rebuilding process that won’t include any shortcuts.
On the other, the silver lining of the Blazers’ flameout at the end of last season was the emergence of McCollum and Leonard. Couple those guys with some raw talent, Lillard, and an excellent coach for this group in Terry Stotts, and it’s not impossible to think that the 2015-16 Blazers will resemble in some way the 2014-15 Suns: A young team playing attractive basketball that hangs around the eighth spot in the playoff race for a while until fading late.
It’s that intrigue, that unpredictability, which may have plenty of fans returning with interest next season that they otherwise wouldn’t have.
(GT) My outlook on this season… If you like watching the Blazers win, it might be a long year. If you like watching a young athletic team get up and down the court and dunk a lot, it should be a lot of fun. Personally I think this team will win somewhere in the 35 game range. That will leave them in the bottom 10 teams in the league and prime for a lottery pick in next year’s draft. As far as the team on the court, I honestly look forward to watching them develop and getting to know a new crop of players in Portland. The past few years has been really status quo with some fairly bland personalities. I think this team will have a lot more personality on and off the court, and be fun to watch play basketball.
(PM) From a wins and losses standpoint, it’s going to be a long season. This team, as currently constructed, will likely struggle to win 30 games. In fact, there are going to be nights where the product on the floor will look more like a weekend pickup game at 24-Hour Fitness than an NBA game.
What was once a potent offensive squad that made its hay with unending barrages of 3-pointers, is now a team full of sub-par marksmen for their respective positions. Of course, what they lack in shooting prowess, they make up for with youth. The Blazers currently have the 4th youngest roster in the whole league, with only the 33-year old Chris Kaman keeping them out of the top spot. While that youth is intriguing, it’s not exactly conducive to winning games in the rough-and-tumble Western Conference.
So, if you’re a Blazer fan and are heading into this season looking for wins and a third straight playoff appearance, it’s time to drop that thought right now. This season isn’t about wins or losses, and it shouldn’t be. This season is going to be about developing the new stable of young players, seeing who fits into the team’s long term plans, and hoping the rest can retain enough value to be flipped for missing pieces down the road.
- GM Neil Olshey gutted the roster and acquired many new faces in favor of the “youth movement” after learning LaMarcus Aldridge would not return. How do you see this impacting his legacy and that of head coach Terry Stotts?
(CM) This year isn’t going to impact anyone’s legacy, but three years from now this team needs to be in the playoffs, and within five years they must be a title contender, or this whole shake up will be a failure. The next five years will do a lot to define the legacy of Olshey and Stotts, and they’ll be remembered for either letting the franchise sink back in to NBA purgatory or worse, or they’ll be remembered as the great architects of the first real title contender in Portland since 1992.
(AA) I think that Olshey did what he felt like he had to do this offseason. He felt that regardless of whether Aldridge was coming back – and I believe he, along with everyone else in the Blazers organization, knew that he was gone – he had to gut the roster.
That decision hurt, and the manner in which Olshey carried his mission out was frustrating. Rarely does a team fall apart as spectacularly as the Blazers just did. That being said, Olshey has an impressive pedigree – I’m sure the Clippers would still love to have him as GM – and he’s assembled a roster with plenty of assets.
Olshey seems to have the kind of clout with Paul Allen that very few in the job have had before him. He appears to be in this job for the long haul. Hopefully the same can be said for Stotts, who is a very good coach, but considering how the Blazers have fooled around with his contract, I’m not sure just how much security he has.
If this team spends considerable time out of the playoffs, someone will pay. My money is on Stotts taking the fall if this team can’t win – and that would be a shame.
(GT) It all depends on Mr. Paul Allen. This summer a lot of people talked about how mysterious and guarded LaMarcus Aldridge was. Well, Allen is even more mysterious and guarded. If Allen signed off on the youth movement, 100%, then he will be willing to be patient to wait out this rebuild. If Allen wants to win now, Olshey and Stotts may be seeing some of their last days in Portland. All indications are that Olshey and Allen work fairly well together and that Allen gives Olshey a longer leash than most general managers we have seen in Portland. This strategy Olshey has set in motion this summer could go either really good or really bad. It all depends on the development of a very young basketball team the next couple years.
(PM) There are two ways of looking at this if you are Terry Stotts. On the one hand, Stotts was a 53 win season from finally pushing his winning percentage above .500 for his career. If everyone returned this season, that was an achievable goal, and one that would continue to add some distance between his first two (mostly disastrous) coaching stints in Milwaukee and Atlanta. So, from a career legacy perspective, the roster turnover (and the inevitable losing seasons that will come with it) is likely to put a bit of a ding in his overall coaching resume.
On the other hand, this move all but solidifies Stotts’ place in Portland for at least the next two or three years, as the team will assuredly want stability in the coaching staff as it focuses more on player development than wins and losses. While he was never truly on the hot seat, if the Blazers dropped the kind of coin it would have taken to keep the previous roster together, Stotts would have been the first to go if the team failed to reach what was becoming higher and higher expectations.
Considering the relatively long odds of the last team truly becoming a championship contender, this rebuild might end up ultimately giving Stotts his best chance at joining the pantheon of Portland TrailBlazer coaches, alongside Jack Ramsey and Rick Adelman.
- The new core of the team is expected to be Damian Lillard, CJ McCollum, and Meyers Leonard with supporting talent in Noah Vonleh, Ed Davis, Mason Plumlee, Al-Farouq Aminu, Tim Frazier, Allen Crabbe, and Moe Harkless. How confident are you that this group of players can become a legitimate playoff team in 2-3 seasons?
(CM) Very confident, but if they aren’t a legitimate playoff team by 2017-18, and by that meaning a team capable of winning a playoff series, this rebuild is a bust. It was a small sample size but I liked the potential I saw from Leonard in 15 minutes a game last season, and I’m curious to see if he can earn a starting role this season and what he can do with the uptick in minutes. Lillard needs to work on defense and taking more high-percentage shots, and ultimately decide if he’ll settle with being an all-star, or up his game and become the superstar we need him to be. McCollum, like Leonard, showed flashes especially in the playoffs, and while we don’t really know what he can do I’m hoping he is the next great shooting guard. His lack of size has some people nervous, but guys have proved before that talent trumps height and size, so we’ll see if McCollum can overcome the same odds. The other guys are mostly unknown commodities who have simply underperformed to this point and we won’t know for certain for a while if that is due to true talent or because they haven’t had the right combination of motivation and teammates. It’s a fact that every player on the team has a sizable amount of flaws as individuals, however if they gel right, they can be an elite team with limited mistakes over time. Call it high expectations and/or unfair pressure, but this team needs to be in the playoffs in year three and winning 2 out of 4 games in a playoff series, winning a series by year four, and earning a trip to the Finals by year 5. Lillard is the face of the franchise, he needs to find ways to help his teammates get the job done now that he’s the $120M man.
(AA) There are a lot of nice pieces in that mix, and possibly outside of Aminu, the Blazers got pretty good value for each of them. But if this team is, for all intents and purposes, unchanged in three years, the Blazers will be nowhere.
Noah Vonleh is the big hope outside of the returning McCollum and Leonard, but even if Terry Stotts develops and hones a wide open, run and gun system that can make this collection of players tick, this still looks like a lightweight team.
Compared to the Blazers team that just broke up – Lillard, Matthews, Batum, Aldridge, Lopez – a “legitimate” playoff team, and this collection of players just isn’t there. A veteran presence, some strength inside, and moves to turn some of these assets into proven winners are needed eventually.
(GT) Define legitimate. If “a legitimate playoff team” means making the playoffs, then sure they could make the playoffs in the next 2 or 3 seasons as an 8 seed. My definition of a legitimate playoff team is a team that you can pencil into the playoffs before the season even begins. Unless everything works out perfectly for the Blazers in the next couple seasons, I do not see them being a write-in in the next 2-3 years. I hope they prove me wrong
(PM) Somewhat confident. Obviously, there are a lot of “ifs” with this young bunch and predicting future success of young players in the NBA is hardly a science. Still, they have a variety of nice pieces already in place that can grow together over the next few years. And, while there are seemingly a dozen failed rebuilds for every Golden State and Oklahoma City, the Blazers are in the rare spot to already have a young All-Star with playoff experience in place to lead the way. They also have a couple key components that were missing from last year’s team, namely athleticism and defensive potential. And, while they may have a lot less shooting on the current roster, that’s a skill that is becoming easier and easier to come by in today’s NBA.
Of course, it’s likely that in 3 years, this roster will look much different than it does today. That’s why, in the end, Damian Lillard is the reason I have more faith in the Blazers long term success than most teams forced to tear things down and start from the ground up. Not necessarily because he’s some transcendent talent in the realm of LeBron James or Kevin Durant (he’s not), but, because he’s a natural born leader that has gotten to where he is today through a tireless work ethic and a single-mindedness to be the very best he can be. If he can instill that kind of attitude on even a couple of the youngsters on this team, we’ll see the NBA Playoffs return to Rip City sooner than later.
- Does this team need a blockbuster trade and/or another lottery pick to contend for a title?
(CM) Not necessarily, but it is ridiculously unlikely that they can get that far without a tremendous amount of luck and they would likely need someone currently on the roster to become a future top-10 talent, not impossible but don’t hold your breath, Steph Curry and James Harden are legitimate superstars, but they’re not all-time top-10 players at present. San Antonio is widely regarded as the modern “model franchise”, as they rarely sign a big name free agent, convince their key players to agree to smaller contracts in order to keep the core together, and they haven’t had or traded for a lottery pick since 1997. I’m having trouble finding a team with a similar formula for success without going all the way back to the 1960’s Celtics. To avoid the blockbuster trade route, Portland will need some big breaks, a lottery pick or two, and 2-3 of their current players beyond Lillard to develop in to all-stars. It’s not unheard of but it is rare, so I would assume they’re going to make a trade at some point, even if it’s just to get the missing piece the way the Warriors did with Andre Iguodala. It’s extremely rare for teams in today’s NBA to get to the Finals without a team built around a core of all-stars. Itt never hurts to have an All-NBA Defensive First-Team candidate who sometimes are not all-stars, but there are not too many exceptions to that list. Take a look at the last 15 champions, all but one had a pair of all-stars in the starting five, someone other than Lillard needs to have a breakout career, and they need to be here already or arrive in the next two years, it’s that simple.
(AA) Absolutely. No question. Even if McCollum and Leonard become established, productive NBA starters, his team is a big piece or two away from contending for a title – and the only way the Blazers have ever gotten big players historically is through the draft.
It’s been well established, time and again, that the Blazers aren’t going to build a team in free agency and on the trade market; they’re only going to lose teams. Point being, the Blazers are going to have to get a nice lottery pick and connect on it – like they did with Lillard at #6 – in the next year or two.
It’s about stars in this league – which is the beautiful and very frustrating thing about the NBA. The Blazers have just one. Championships take more.
(GT) Absolutely. This team, as presently constructed, will not contend for a title. Yes, they are young and have potential. Yes, they have a legitimate star point guard in Damian Lillard. Yes, they may surprise some people in the next couple years. But potential and surprises don’t win titles. The best thing that could happen to this team in the next couple years is to add a couple lottery picks, continue to be aggressive in bringing in talented free agents, and continue to find talent in the NBA discount bin. I don’t see Portland being involved in a blockbuster trade in the next couple years, unless they are the third team that helps facilitate the trade. Lottery picks will be this team’s best friend in the next couple seasons.
(PM) Absolutely. In fact they’ll likely need both if they want to get to a championship level anytime soon. Odds are that if this team gets to that level in the next 5 years that (outside of Damian Lillard) maybe 2 or 3 of the guys from this current roster are still on the team. As much potential as guys like Meyers Leonard, CJ McCollum, Mason Plumlee and Noah Vonleh have, the odds are still quite long any of the 3 turns into a bonafide All-Star to pair with Lillard. More likely is that 2 or 3 of them become nice young players that the Blazers can package together to gain that kind of star player.
If they can swing that type of trade, mixed with hitting on at least one of their (almost assured) lottery picks in the next two seasons, the Blazers could find themselves in even better position than they seemed to be just 9 months ago. At least, that’s the idea. Actually pulling that plan off will take a deft touch from Neil Olshey mixed with a little luck and some impeccable timing to have the right player available at just the right time.
- For the first time in history, 2020 will be foresight. Where do you see this team five years from now in the year 2020, and are they better or worse off than they would have been if Aldridge had stuck around?
(CM) This team will be better off regardless, LA just was not the guy to get them over the hump, and if he had stayed and encouraged Matthews and Lopez to stay, this team could be paying roughly $73M per year for just four players (assuming Lillard gets the same deal he has) over the next five years, all of who will be 30-35 by the time those contracts expire. I seriously doubt that young potential-packed players in Vonleh, Leonard, and McCollum agree to stay in to their late 20’s without a big deal or a reasonable shot at a starting role unless a starter goes down. The chances were high that you were going to overpay to keep a group that wasn’t going to win the big one, struggle to keep a quality bench together, then have to start over with an aging Lillard in 2020. Unless Olshey was able to get lottery picks in exchange for one of his lightly-used lottery players, there’s a really good chance you start over with absolutely zero assets, and spend five more years in purgatory to do so. Whereas in the present, you have a chance to see what Lillard, CJ, and Leonard can do if they “grow up” together and hit their primes at the same time, while surrounding them with a mixture of other lottery players and young players and vets. Vonleh proved in the Summer League that he has skills, we just don’t know if that translates the same way against real competition yet. The potential is there for a Lillard-led team, and I’m excited to see if he can take his squad to new levels that the franchise hasn’t seen since Drexler’s last playoff run in Portland. All of that said, Lillard is making the big bucks now and has three full seasons of professional experience, so the clock is ticking and I will be extremely disappointed if he doesn’t have them in the Finals in June of 2020.
(AA) It’s impossible to know what the team will or would have looked like in 2020. But, overall, I think the Blazers would have been more successful over the next five years leading up to 2020 had Aldridge stayed.
When LaMarcus said last year that he wanted to become the best Blazer ever, it wasn’t an outrageous or overly hyperbolic statement. Aldridge had the talent and body of work to lead this team deep into the playoffs and lead himself deep into the record books.
His departure, rejection, really, will sting for a long time. Hopefully the Blazers can recover. But they’re about to embark on an uncertain and difficult path back to the kind of relevance they had just before Wes Matthews tore his Achilles last year.
(GT) This may be crazy but I fully believe that the Blazers will be better in 2020 on their current trajectory than if they would have resigned the roster this summer. It wasn’t just LaMarcus Aldridge that they would have given a big contract. If Aldridge would have returned to Rip City, they would have given big contracts to Matthews and Lopez as well. All of a sudden the Blazers are a team in the luxury tax without the flexibility to improve in the future. Aldridge is a 30 year old, 7 footer, with a moderate injury report. History has shown that father time is undefeated. Aldridge may have already seen the best days of his basketball career. Lillard on the other hand will be 30 in 2020 and be playing the best basketball of his career. With all that he has done in his first 3 seasons in the NBA, it is crazy to think about what Lillard can do in the next 5 seasons.
(PM) I don’t think it’s any secret that the Blazers would have done just about anything short of taking Greg Popovich and Tim Duncan out for a “meeting” on Paul Allen’s yacht and “accidentally” “losing” them at sea, in order to keep LaMarcus Aldridge in Portland. Not just because they wanted to appease the fan base, either. No, they wanted to keep him because over the last two seasons he’s been, without question, one of the 10 best players in the NBA. Those are the kinds of players that win you championships, and they don’t just grow on trees.
That being said, by bringing back Aldridge that almost assuredly means bringing back Matthews and Lopez. That team may have had some room to grow into a legit championship contender, but, they also had plenty of limitations as well, most notably related to the salary cap. So, while the rebuild may have prematurely closed the door on one Blazer team, it’s certainly possible that it was simply a case of not further delaying the inevitable.
Ultimately, time will tell if this is rebuild will work. It’s going to take some luck and creativity to find a player as good as Aldridge, and those are the types of talents you build contending teams around. And, even if this team is in a better place in 5 years than it would have been if they had kept the gang together (which is likely to be the case), it’s the multiple playoff trips and potential deep runs in the 4 years prior that hurts to lose so much.
- Which of the new players are you hoping to see in starting roles and who do you expect to have a breakout season?
(CM) I hope to see a starting five of Lillard, McCollum, Aminu, Vonleh, and Leonard. I would love to see breakout seasons from both McCollum and Vonleh, as both have great scoring ability and seem poised for great careers if they live up to said potential. I expect Leonard to really excel in the second half of year one, but he’s going to struggle early and will most likely lose some starting opportunities to Plumlee in the first half. By the end of the year that starting five will be established, and hopefully looking to next year as the year they take their collective big step forward and get back in the playoffs in year three. I remember how excited this city was when Roy and LA got the team back in the playoffs in their third year together, and the “anything can happen when Roy’s in the lineup” hopefulness the city seemed to collectively feel during his time here and I’m sure Drexler gave fans that feeling also. I hope that Lillard can bring that same feeling back to the Rose City. He’s on his way but there is a long road ahead.
(AA) I think that Noah Vonleh probably has the best upside of anyone the Blazers picked up, though Mo Harkless is an intriguing player too. Mostly, though, this season should be about getting the most out of CJ McCollum and Meyers Leonard – seeing if they can be relied upon to win NBA games night after night, and, especially with Leonard, defining his role and setting him up for the kind of success the Blazers will need him to have down the road.
(GT) Not only do I think that Mason Plumlee will start at center for the Trail Blazers this year, I think that he may be an upgrade over Robin Lopez. Last season Plumlee played all 82 games, started 45 of them. Per 36 minutes Plumlee averaged 14.8 points, 10.6 rebounds, and shot 58% from the field. Robin Lopez only played 59 games last season, starting all of them. Per 36 minutes Lopez averaged 12.4 points and 8.7 rebounds. Numbers-wise, Plumlee has the edge. This coming season Plumlee will make $1.4 million dollars and will still be on his rookie deal in the 2016-2017 season. This season Lopez will make roughly $13.5 million dollars a season for the next 4 years. Plumlee is 25, Lopez is 27. I really look forward to seeing Plumlee continue to develop and find himself a role as the starting center for the Blazers.
The player that I think is going to breakout this season is Noah Vonleh. What he did at Summer League was great. He came out and dominated games. He didn’t back down from the challenge of going up against the number one pick in the draft, Karl-Anthony Towns. Vonleh showed a well-rounded game that even included shooting beyond the arc. The potential is oozing from Vonleh. One thing that has been talked about too much around Portland is that this is what Vonleh does, plays well against weaker competition. They say that is what he did at college, why he had more success last year in the D-League than in the NBA, and why he was able to have a good showing in Vegas. The Blazers likely won’t ask Vonleh to start right away. Coming off the bench, Vonleh may just have that opportunity to dominate weaker competition, less skilled defenders, and other bench players. I look for Vonleh to be a fan favorite in Portland and to also be someone that gives the Charlotte executives nightmares for ever trading him.
(PM) I’m expecting Gerald Henderson, Al-Farouq Aminu and probably Mason Plumlee to step into the starting lineup alongside returners Damian Lillard and Meyers Leonard. While CJ McCollum is the arguably the teams most talented offensive player outside of Lillard, his skillset is likely best suited to cover bench scoring duties and to run the second unit. And, while there is sure to be a fierce battle among Plumlee, Leonard, Davis and Vonleh for the two big man starting spots, I see it ultimately coming down to Leonard and Vonleh fighting for one spot and Davis and Plumlee duking it out for the other, as Stotts looks to pair one of his “shooting bigs” with one of the more defensive-minded post players.
In the end, look for whoever can secure the starting spots to get first crack at breaking out next season. As it stands, that puts Mason Plumlee as the most likely of the new Blazers to have a true breakout year. He’s shown potential in his sporadic minutes in Brooklyn, and surprised everyone by securing a spot on the US World Cup roster (over Lillard, no less) just last year.
He may not impress you with his shooting prowess (he rarely makes any shots outside of arms reach from the hoop), but, he is an impressive athletic specimen that can affect the game in a lot of ways, and give the Blazers an above the rim presence in the low post that they haven’t had in a long time. If he can continue to build on the skills he showed alongside the best players in the league at the USA Basketball mini-camp this past offseason, then expect to see him to start to distance himself from the other young Blazer big men.
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