What’s next for Damian Lillard and the Trail Blazers?
“What we weren’t going to do was become a victim of LaMarcus’ decision. We had made that decision months in advance. The contingency we had in place was not to replace LaMarcus Aldridge, because quite honestly, that player didn’t exist. Our contingency was we were going to move away from the veterans that had complemented LaMarcus on the current roster and build around young players on favorable contracts, or with restricted free agent status down the road, that were on the same career arc as Damian Lillard. That’s the path we chose. We went straight ahead in that direction without looking back.”
The above 102 words, spoken by Portland Trail Blazers general manager Neil Olshey to then-Grantland writer Zach Lowe way back in August 2015, are a perfect encapsulation of how the Blazers have navigated this decade from one era in franchise history to the next. The Blazers spent nine years building around LaMarcus Aldridge, the No. 2 overall pick in the 2006 draft; they slowly transitioned from a 21-win laughingstock when he arrived to a fringe title contender as he entered his prime. In 2015, Aldridge was 29 years old and ready to win, and Olshey had shrewdly built a team of veteran guys around Aldridge who were around the same age and similarly ready. Then, in the blink of an eye, Aldridge was gone. Olshey wasn’t devastated; he was prepared. He just shifted gears.
That mantra Olshey described to Lowe that summer came to define the Blazers’ team-building philosophy. The words “the same career arc as Damian Lillard” meant everything in Portland. Lillard was the Blazers’ new captain, and he was turning 25 that summer — so Olshey went out and gathered a locker roomful of 25-year-olds. Newcomers Ed Davis, Mason Plumlee and Al-Farouq Aminu, along with bench holdovers CJ McCollum, Meyers Leonard and Allen Crabbe, were all within 22 months of Lillard’s age. Just as he had before, Olshey had successfully built a team that could age together and — maybe, just maybe — pursue a championship together.
For the most part, the strategy worked. The Blazers didn’t need to tank to return to relevance — they won 44 games in their very first post-Aldridge season, returning to the playoffs way ahead of schedule and even stealing a round thanks to a couple of well-timed Clippers injuries. Rebuilding on the fly rarely works in the NBA, but for the Blazers it did. They had built a young team with talent, cohesion and real potential.
Except here’s the thing. It’s now three years later, and still not much has changed. The Blazers are still mostly the same team. They flipped Plumlee for Jusuf Nurkic; they salary-dumped Crabbe. Leonard’s been relegated to the end of the bench. But in essence, you’re still looking at a team that’s following that familiar Damian Lillard arc, aging as he ages and enduring every growing pain he endures. That was a more exciting proposition three years ago than it is now.
The Blazers’ 2018 playoff run — if one’s even allowed to call a winless stretch of basketball lasting precisely eight days a “run” — reinforced that point. The 2017-18 Blazers, who should be entering their prime with a star player approaching 28 and a team of guys around him who have cohesion and continuity, were promptly bounced in the first round by the New Orleans Pelicans. Lillard was limited to 18.5 points per game on 35 percent shooting in the series. The supposedly much-improved Blazers defense, meanwhile, allowed the Pelicans to run wild for 116.3 points per 100 possessions. This was supposed to be the year the Blazers ascended to the next level, and instead they waited until April to fall flat on their faces.
Again: Lillard is about to turn 28. Three years ago when this group first came together, it had nothing but time. Everyone was young and bright-eyed and enjoying the process of growing together. Now, the clock is ticking. For comparison’s sake, LeBron James was 27 and 28 years old when he won his first two titles. Michael Jordan was 28, 29 and 30 for his initial three-peat. Magic already had four championship rings by his 28th birthday; Bird had two by his. Lillard isn’t in the same class with any of those all-time greats, obviously, but he aspires to be that type of player — an undisputed “best player on a championship team” level guy. The problem is that most of those guys had already figured out a plan by the time they hit their late 20s. If you’re Lillard’s age and you don’t see a path from here to title contention, the odds are against you ever getting there. For every Dirk Nowitzki who keeps hacking away and finally breaks through in the twilight of his career, there are a dozen Reggie Millers who simply never make it. Lillard surely knows this, and this stage of his career will be defined by how he handles that reality.
We already know he’s struggling with it. It was widely reported in January that the Blazers’ franchise player called a meeting with the team’s owner, Paul Allen, to discuss his future in Portland. During that meeting, he made it known that “he has championship aspirations” and wants to “fulfill those lofty goals during the remaining years of his prime window,” per ESPN. Lillard sought assurance from Allen that he’d do everything he could.
What can Allen do, though? What can Olshey? At this point, their hands are tied. The $41 million in cap space that the team devoted to Leonard, Evan Turner and Moe Harkless back in 2016 is now a sunk cost. Olshey has a history of making great decisions at the margins — finding solid rotation players like Shabazz Napier on the scrap heap, for instance — but he’s whiffed on some of the bigger moves, and the Blazers’ growth has been hamstrung as a result. Lillard (and McCollum, and the rest of them) have pretty much already hit their primes, and a first-round sweep appears to be the best they can do. Their talent is maxed out and their front office is capped out.
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That’s not to say all hope is lost, necessarily — creative ways to improve a cap-jailed team do exist in the NBA. The Pelicans team that just beat the Blazers are a great example — they appeared to have no way forward given their salary situation, but they shrewdly enhanced their roster by attaching a pick to their worst contract, Omer Asik, and flipping him into a valuable piece in Nikola Mirotic. (Now’s a good time to mention that Mirotic owned the Blazers this past week, bombing 12-of-26 from 3-point land and averaging a near-double-double.) You can also emulate the Toronto Raptors, who kept their team mostly intact from last year, yet still won eight games more this year, thanks to a “culture reset” and a new style of play.
So what’s the Blazers’ path? How do they get from where they are now — a nice playoff team, and nothing more — from where they really want to go? That’s the question that will define not only the rest of Lillard’s career, but the next chapter for the Blazers as a franchise as well. Everyone’s following that familiar career arc of Damian Lillard, yet no one really knows where it’s going.