many Portland Trail Blazers Fans and many experts are bullish on improving the Blazers for the 2022-23 NBA season. Portland exchanged for Jerami Grant, signed Gary Payton II, and retained Anfernee Simons and Jusuf Nurkić. People see this as a new start after the relatively mild procedure of the last seven years.
However, not everyone is confident that a new experiment will work. What if that is … not? That is the topic of Blazer’s Edge Mailbag today.
Hello Dave,
What happens next season if this team doesn’t perform? Would you like to replace a lot of pieces and remodel around Dame again? Is it possible that Heart, Grant, and Little will all be back next season? I just think what the future looks like.
Dominique
Definition of success
First, we need to define “execution”. The Blazers are adapting to the new lineup and will probably continue to move transitionally during the season and / or throughout the summer of next year. They are not yet in their final form. It buys them some room. This year, the bar will be lowered even if it is not reset.
If they continued on the same path and had a nearly unchanged lineup (CJ McCollum alongside Lillard, two prepayments that fill three and four spots), the exit of another first round would be emotionally exhausted. It would have been. Without evolution, the end of the grind was unpredictable. Everyone will raise their hand and say, “This will never change.”
By making big moves, the Blazers changed the story. The results don’t have to be so dramatic as the roster has evolved. If they made a playoff but resigned in the first round of the year, they can say they are accustomed to each other or just need to make different moves.
The Blazers may have two playoff cycles (2023 and 2024) to move forward past the first round before despair begins again. For now, playing off in any way remains the standard of “success.” If they do, they aren’t going to break it.
That’s why the definition of “failure” of not playing off this season works. Missing the postseason will question the composition of the team, unless it was caused by a series of strange injuries. I believe it drives change.
Last attempt
If the Blazers collapse this year, the first thing they see is coaching. I’m not saying this because of the specific rating of Chauncey Billups. This is the easiest and most common fix in this situation. “Have you tried turning it off and then back on?” NBA. Billups’ contract still has a long tail, but the team will probably be willing to eat it to avoid a complete rebuild.
But let’s say they didn’t go that route or weren’t happy that the coaching changes were enough. I don’t think this roster will come back in the event of a disaster this season as well. If Damian Lillard, Jerami Grant, Anfernee Simons and Jusuf Nurkić are unable to make the playoffs in the first year, there is no reason to consider competing for the title in the third year.
This is an order of magnitude different from what LaMarcus Aldridge has seen in the years since 2015, but the Blazers follow a similar pattern. Building a team around Damian Lillard by drafting, exchanging and signing quality players is a defined mission of the front office and is actually the only thing they can do. They moved the best assets (former veterans McCallum, Norman Powell, Robert Covington) to secure picks and cap space for the best possible swing. This is the last attempt.
Unless something strange happens, we won’t trade up from players like Grant, Payton, Simons and more. They are the best possible examples of positions / prototypes that the Blazers can reasonably obtain. Joe Cronin put the process back into overdrive to see if it worked.
Otherwise, the Blazers and the world would have to conclude that this would not be the case. It doesn’t look pretty, but it does.
What if it doesn’t work?
But wait, Dominique. If it doesn’t work, not everything will be lost. I don’t know if you noticed it, but the Blazers have done a pretty good job of reconstructing the roster so far, while maintaining future flexibility.
Take a look at the Portland roster by player age. Let’s see if the player can reasonably expect to continue beyond the course modifications required for short-term failures.
Players who were able to continue rebuilding
Greg Brown III, 20 years old
Elijah Hughes, 24 years old
Keon Johnson, 20 years old
Nassir Little, 22 years old
Marcos Lousada, 23 years old
Shaedon Sharpe, 19 years old
Anfernee Simons, 23
Jabari Walker, 20 years old
Trendon Watford, 21 years old
Keep in mind that the lineup won’t win awards, but the nine Trail Blazers players are young enough to be a team tomorrow, not just today.Not all of them right Stay on the team if restart is turned off, but one of them can..
Players who do not continue rebuilding
Players that may be offloaded by rebuilding are categorized into color categories based on ease of trading and release. Contract status is a major factor, as is talent and age.
Green status-easy to move
Damian Lillard, 31 years old, $ 259 million in debt by 2027
Josh Hart, 27, has $ 13 million in debt by 2023 and has player options in 2024.
Justise Winslow, 26, $ 4 million in debt by 2023
Yellow status-may require incentives
Jusuf Nurkić, 27, debt of $ 70 million by 2026
Red status-problem contract
Jerami Grant, 28, $ 21 million in debt by 2023 *
The Trail Blazers aren’t overburdened by veteran talent, assuming the failure situation occurs within a year.
Some may have more debt in the future by including Damian Lillard in the status of the “green” contract, but assuming he’s not injured, he’s still an NBA superstar. is. Multiple teams want him. If the Blazers have trouble moving contracts, it’s in the lineup when he’s in his mid-thirties and earns 50% of his salary cap himself.
Josh Hart makes his talent-to-cost ratio attractive across the league by signing contracts or choosing affordable options. Justise Winslow’s contract ends after the season.
That alone leaves Jusuf Nurkić and Jerami Grant.
At $ 17.5 million a year, Nurkitsch earns a decent salary given his value to the Blazers (starting center, only center, fits system and culture). He is also at a decent level compared to other centers and is becoming the 14th highest paid pivot in the league. His contract does not become an albatross.
Nurkitsch’s “Yellow Alert” status is due to his injury history and the fact that the team hasn’t recently invested in a non-elite center. The Blazers may have to regain unequal returns to move him. Or they may keep him on the team. But if they really had the motivation to deal with him, they could certainly do so, except for catastrophic injuries.
Currently, Jerami Grant is as easy to move as a green light player. Technically, his contract will expire at the end of next season. His red light status assumes that the Blazers are trying to extend him. Otherwise, they simply let him walk and chalk the loss of the first round of 2025 as a small price for the experiment.
If the Blazers extend the grant, he will be expensive. He’s also the main reason the Blazers want to improve this season. If they don’t improve, it means he didn’t help (almost by default). Awareness of increased salaries and decreased utility is combined for questionable trade prospects.
But if the Blazers don’t pay Grant the bundle, they don’t have a problematic contract with the book, or at least not a problematic contract next season.
Sad reconstruction, not tragedy
This is the “smart” hidden behind last year’s Blazers strategy. They signed a veteran bus dumping contract in the middle of last season. As they moved forward, they took shots, but kept “out” in case those shots didn’t work.
I don’t think there is any reconstruction in Portland’s short-term plan. But if they have to, they are actually in a decent position to do that without having to spend more assets to reach a decent jump-off space.
Portland may have run out of assets for improvement, but they still have the means to escape.
Thank you for your question, Dominique! You can all send you to blazersub@gmail.com, and we will try to answer!
