Portland Trail Blazers General Manager Neil Olshey may not make the biggest or splashiest moves, but the man sure can scour the trash heaps with the best of them. He combined that scavenger’s mentality with the hustling ability of a used car salesman at the NBA trade deadline, leveraging perhaps the least valuable commodity in today’s NBA landscape–$20 million in free salary cap space–into a solid backup point guard in Brian Roberts and a future first-round draft pick.
Olshey himself may have called the deal that brought Anderson Varejao (who Portland will likely waive using the one-use-only stretch provision) over from Cleveland along with a reportedly top-10 protected 2018 first-rounder “sexy” in his interview yesterday, but after spending years vitalizing the sad-sack Los Angeles Clippers, Olshey’s had a lunch pail attitude from day one here in Portland. His transactions are understated and don’t really catch the attention of folks during the summer. As Olshey said, though, those kinds of deals can produce guys like Robin Lopez, who revived his career in Portland, and Gerald Henderson, who’s been a big part of the Blazers’ midseason surge.
Even though the salary cap is expected to skyrocket in the coming years, players’ max salaries will shoot up along with it. Other players may take a look at deals like the $80 million deal given to Reggie Jackson by the Detroit Pistons (Jackson was a backup and malcontent in Oklahoma City), or the $100 million-plus max contracts scored by Anthony Davis and Damian Lillard last summer, and demand the same, or more, depending on their tenure and stature within the NBA.
Olshey knows this better than I do, and he also knows that the rookie salary scale is his best friend in the future. A rookie’s initial NBA contract is locked into an amount in the $5 million per year to the $3 million per year range for four years, depending on his draft position…which is going to be peanuts as the new TV deal wreaks financial havoc in the NBA. The Draft is going to be even more important than usual for the non-glamour teams, not just as a means to draft that elusive star player, but as a means to surround said star with young, affordable talent. It is a gamble, but I promise you, all 30 NBA teams would rather draft a kid that has maybe 80-85% of Andre Iguodala’s game, and pay him about 20% of the salary the NBA Finals MVP would demand if he hit the open market.
Which is a big reason why the next opponent for Portland, the Golden State Warriors, have been so successful. It’s just not that they signed the frail Stephen Curry to a below-market extension a few years ago, and now the best player in the world is making half what his contemporaries make (until he gets HIS monster deal). It’s drafting Harrison Barnes and utilizing him in a big way for cheap. It’s drafting Draymond Green in the second round, and utilizing his unique game until they had to pay him big bucks last summer. It’s swinging a much-needed trade for Andrew Bogut and squeezing Iguodala into the cap space created by Curry’s cheap deal.
That bubble is about to burst for the Warriors. Barnes is due for an extension, and though he has value to Golden State, the team has to think about the contract Curry is going to get soon, and the huge deals already on the books with Klay Thompson and Green locked up. Unless the Warriors’ owner, Joe Lacob, wants to eat an extra ten figure tax bill every season, the chances of Barnes staying in the Bay Area are not good.
This is where the Draft comes in. If you have a good front office (the Warriors are one of the best), you utilize the Draft as a pipeline of cheap talent you really can’t get otherwise, unless you want to pull marginally skilled role players and washed-up veterans off the waiver wires and scrap heaps (ask Dallas how well that works). One reason why the San Antonio Spurs have been so good for seemingly forever is that they’ve drafted guys who both have skills they covet and fit their culture. They don’t need the Draft to provide them with stars (the Kawhi Leonard trade notwithstanding). They need the Draft to provide them with the role players to support the stars they do have.
Smart teams like the Warriors are following in their footsteps, and if Golden State wants to keep playing their unique brand of basketball, and win championships doing it, they need to replenish the back end of their rotation with cheap youngsters, smart free-agent signings at the mid-level, and a clear understanding of what certain players can and can’t do.
The Blazers, however, aren’t at the place where they should be making ancillary moves. They still need that second star to pair with Damian Lillard, someone who’s better than CJ McCollum. Maybe even better than Lillard himself.
This is where one can get frustrated with Olshey. Sure, the team’s overachieved, and the young guys he plucked out of the ether (Olshey Specials, where he gets a rotation player while giving up next to nothing) are playing well with Lillard, but that’s a ticket to the kind of first-round playoff exit purgatory the Blazers have mostly been in since Clyde Drexler was traded. They won’t find a second star in the Draft picking in the teens, and with the pick they got from Cleveland being top-10 protected, there’s a slim chance of finding the kind of guy they need with that pick in 2018. They won’t ever sign that star player in free agency, either.
Neil Olshey is very good at maintaining the position of the needle, but he’s done a poor job at moving that needle in the right direction. I realize it’s very difficult to find the kind of player I’m talking about, but in a year where the Blazers were supposed to be very bad, a year where Olshey positioned the team to be very bad if we’re being honest, to see them still achieving a .500 record is both inspiring and frustrating, as well as misleading.
That record is due much more to the weakness of the Western Conference this season than it is to any kind of skill the Blazers have shown. Coach Terry Stotts can coax a top-ten NBA offense out of me and four of my OSN colleagues, but we‘d also defend about as well as the Blazers have all season as well (horribly, in short). Last year, the Blazers would have been lucky to win 20 games with this roster.
Still, we ARE talking about a man that made the Los Angeles Clippers, the most pathetic franchise in North American sport, relevant. Olshey’s work can’t really be judged at this moment. If he’s trying to make the Trail Blazers relevant in the championship picture, though, this year has been spent stuck in neutral. No matter how fun the team is to watch.
Time for picks! Let’s go!
(All stats courtesy of NBA.com and basketball-reference.com.)
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Friday, Feb. 19: vs. the Golden State Warriors, 7:00 PM, CSNNW
The Skinny: This is the first game back from the All-Star Break for both teams, yet because of the Warriors’ success this season and the All-Star rewards they reaped, the Blazers probably got more rest from it than they did.
I don’t expect that to matter much tonight, though. The Warriors’ quest to exceed the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls’ record 72 wins in an NBA season resumes, and for this night at least, that burden won’t be felt so heavily.
The statistical dominance of the 48-4 Warriors is staggering. They lead the NBA in field goal percentage, three-point percentage by a large margin (they shoot 42.4% from three as a team, more than three percentage points higher than the second-place Spurs), team assists per game, and points per game.
They’re third in rebounding, first in offensive rating and net rating, second in defensive rating, and have the best effective field goal percentage in the league, all this while playing at a blistering pace; only the helter-skelter Sacramento Kings, who do things without a real plan, play faster than the Warriors, and just barely.
Versatility is the key to Golden State’s awesomeness. Having as many players as possible that can do as many things as possible is the new golden standard in the NBA, one that’s as impossible to match as having Michael Jordan was for the Bulls way back when. The Warriors don’t defeat you with a few huge roundhouses like the Jordan-Scottie Pippen Bulls did. They wear you down like the inexorable tide, washing away your resistances, until they eventually swamp you.
Maybe the Spurs can beat them in the postseason, having already mastered the kind of game Golden State plays when the likes of Curry and Thompson were still trying to get laid in high school. Maybe the Cavaliers, fresh off dumping salary onto the Blazers, can channel their collective star power and outshine the Warriors’ one for all, all for one approach–they did win two of the first three games these teams played in last year’s NBA Finals.
When last season ended, however, I confidently picked the Warriors to win the title, despite their prior postseason struggles. Maybe the Spurs losing to the Clippers played a role in their winning last year, but I still thought Golden State would pull through even if they met in the playoffs.
Unless something catastrophic happens in the next two months, I expect I’ll be picking the Warriors to win the NBA championship in this year’s end-of-season article, too.
Player To Watch: Damian Lillard. Called “Curry Lite” by some NBA analysts, Lillard plays the same kind of game Curry does. Curry has better passing abilities and better teammates, which doesn’t sound like much separation, and it really isn’t.
When you’re talking about the line between “star” and “superstar,” though, those small differences are more than enough. Lillard is a star. Curry is the best in the world.
Prediction: Warriors march on.
Sunday, Feb. 21: vs. the Utah Jazz, 6:00 PM, CSNNW
The Skinny: Yet another important game, for those who care about the playoffs. Right after playing the Warriors, Portland plays one of the teams vying with them for the right to serve as the first sacrifice to Golden State in the playoffs.
The Blazers are seventh in the West, a half-game ahead of both Utah and the Houston Rockets. The Rockets aren’t really a threat; they got their butts kicked so soundly at the beginning of the month by Portland, in two different games, that their interim coach J.B. Bickerstaff publicly said his team was “broken.” They’ve spent the last several weeks trying to trade Dwight Howard, and failed. That might cost them Howard this summer when he opts out of his current contract, and tries to sign a bigger one, though the market for a 30-year-old, oft-injured, prima donna big man that can’t shoot may be slimmer than he expects. Not at the price he’s reportedly going to ask for, which could be in excess of $25-$30 million per year for four years.
Utah, on the other hand, has been impressive. They were slated as a playoff team even before the season started and the decline of the West happened. To still be in the conversation, despite all the injuries to key young players, is a tribute to coach Quin Snyder and the steady approach he teaches.
I’d put more faith in Utah than Houston to make the playoffs, but that might be my instinctual hatred of soft, prissy athletes talking. The Blazers also have a tough road to hoe going forward.
If I had to pick right now, as the last third of the season begins, who was going to be left out of the playoffs between Portland, Utah, and Houston, I’d pick Houston. Expect that opinion to both vary among every observer of the NBA, and to change among them weekly, mine included.
Needless to say, both teams playing in this game want it and need it very badly.
Player To Watch: Al-Farouq Aminu. Like before, he’ll have the task of slowing down the fulcrum of the Jazz’s offense, Gordon Hayward.
Prediction: I’ll go with Portland here. Should be a fun game, despite Utah being the slowest team in the league according to pace.
So, a funny thing happened last week. Before the season, I made a bet with my brother that if the Blazers won 35 games or more this season, I’d have to pay him money. If the Blazers failed to reach 35 victories, he’d owe me.
After my dog Rocket was hospitalized, my brother paid $700 for her care. Though we ultimately lost Rocket, I still appreciate his efforts more than I can ever express. To help with his expenses, I gave him some money after I got paid, and will talk with him about further expenses, as he’s also trying to repair his teeth.
My brother went ahead and called off the bet, even though it’s looking very likely he would win. So the Bro Counter is now turned off for the year. Whatever I may say about my brother, he’s got a good heart and is a class act.
And since he reads my articles, I just admitted it to him. Swell.
Trail Blazers’ Record: 27-27
Jared’s Picks Record: 29-25
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