Another losing season for Blazers? Tanks a lot

Rookie Scoot Henderson, shown here driving past former Blazer guard CJ McCollum, turned things around the second half of the season, one of the few bright spots for the team

Updated 4/17/2024 2:15 PM

Mercifully, the Trail Blazers’ season has ended.

The denouement happened Sunday at Sacramento, where the Kings annihilated a skeleton Portland crew 121-82. The game mattered to the Kings, who needed the win to get the homecourt in its nine/10-seed play-in matchup with Golden State. It didn’t matter if it mattered to the Blazers, who were down to eight reserves and even without rookie point guard Scoot Henderson, who evidently had some hip discomfort.

Since the Blazers own the Warriors’ first-round pick in the June NBA draft, Sacramento’s win was a good thing for the local quintet, which benefits from a lower Golden State finish. Have a seat, Scoot and DeAndre Ayton.

Portland finished the season 21-61, worst in the Western Conference and tied with Charlotte for the third-worst in the league behind only Detroit and Washington. It was the Blazers’ worst record since going 21-61 in 2005-06 and tied for second-worst all-time, above only the 18-64 mark in the franchise’s second season, 1971-72. The 11-30 home record is the worst in club’s 54-year history.

Over the final 17 games, Portland was 2-15. There were losing streaks of eight, seven, nine and 11 games.

I’ll bet you didn’t watch the Kings-Blazers game — or much of it — on TV as you went about your weekend. Most fans pretty much checked out a while ago, some before the season even began.

I recently asked a friend — a partial season ticket-holder of the Trail Blazers for several years — to name all the players on the team this season.

She could name two.

I don’t think this is an anomaly. I would gauge interest in the Blazers at a low since the end of the Jail Blazers era in the mid-2000s.

If I’m home and able, I watch all the games on Root Sports, but things are trending in the opposite direction. TV viewership through the All-Star break was down 49 percent from a year ago according to the Sports Business Journal — worst decline in the NBA over that period. Numbers for two-thirds of the NBA clubs have been on the rise this season.

Part of the problem with the Blazers’ TV ratings was the departure of Damian Lillard to Milwaukee. Part of it was rate hikes on Root Sports, which carries the games. The biggest part, I believe, is this team was embarrassingly bad.

The Blazers went 27-55 in 2021-22, then 33-49 last season, tanking through the latter part of each campaign with the draft lottery in mind. This season? El stinko.

Over the Blazers’ last three seasons, they are 81-165. That ranks among the worst three campaigns in franchise history. From 2004-07, at the end of the Jail Blazers era, Portland was 80-166. That’s the club’s worst three-year record since the beginning from 1970-74.

How does this rank league-wide? Detroit has by far the NBA’s worst three-year record at 54-192. Portland is next-worst. Washington? Charlotte? Houston? All better.

Average attendance at Moda Center has still been pretty good, ranking 13th in the NBA at 18,326 for the 41 home dates. Per Dewayne Hankins, president of business operations for the Blazers, a large construction project last summer decreased capacity slightly to 19,393. The 2023-24 attendance figure is also down slightly from the 18,716 average of the previous season. I wonder about next season. Will fans pungle up to see what likely will be another losing team?

Portland has a history of supporting its NBA franchise. Old-timers will remember that the Blazers set an NBA record of 814 games at Memorial Coliseum from 1977 through 1995, when the Rose Garden opened. Capacity in those years ranged from 12,666 to 12,921.

After the move to the bigger building, Blazer home attendance was at its lowest from 2003-07 as the Jail Blazers era wound down. Attendance average dipped below 17,000 four straight seasons, hitting its nadir at 15,049 in 2005-06. With Brandon Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge coming aboard, interest picked back up and the Blazers averaged more than 20,000 four years in a row from 2008-12, ranking second in the league in 2010-11 (20,510) and 2011-12 (20,496). They had perennial top-10 numbers through most of the 2010s.

And during that time, they featured pretty good teams as well. From 2013-21, the Blazers made the playoff eight straight seasons, reaching the Western Conference finals in 2019. Soon enough, though, the bottom would fall out.

Don’t blame Chauncey Billups. The third-year coach has rarely had a full deck — and the full deck has been less than overwhelming. CJ McCollum was gone by the middle of Billups’ first season at the helm. Lillard played 87 games over two seasons, then flew the coop. You can argue over when general manager Joe Cronin’s “rebuild” began, but you can’t argue that Billups hasn’t been given a fair chance to prove his coaching mettle.

This season, Portland’s injury count has been among the league’s highest. The players who finished with the most games played were Jabari Walker, Toumani Camara, Duop Reath, Matisse Thybulle and Henderson. That is three rookies, a second-year player and a 27-year-old role player.

The Blazers haven’t acknowledged tanking, but maybe it’s because nobody is asking. The abdominal injury that limited second-year guard Shaedon Sharpe to 32 games is certainly legit. You have to wonder, however, about the late-season absences of Jerami Grant, Anfernee Simons and Malcolm Brogdon.  At the least, you would assume that were the Blazers in the running for the playoffs, they would be in the lineup. Probably Sharpe, too. (If not, is anyone concerned about the team’s trainer and strength and conditioning crew? How can everybody keep getting hurt?)

I’ve always felt uncomfortable with tanking. First, don’t put yourself in that situation. Second, it’s not fair to the fans. The playoffs matter most, of course, but regular-season games matter, too. It’s no badge of honor that the Blazers recently became the second NBA team ever to start five rookies in a game. That one was on the road. Fans who pay several hundred dollars to bring their family to a game deserve their team’s best available lineup, not a G-League fantasy crew.

Three years in a row? With a proud franchise that has been a playoff staple for most of the past five decades? Inexcusable.

To be clear — the young men in Blazer uniforms are giving their all on the court. They played hard for Billups much more often than not.

Cronin is in his third year as the Blazers’ GM. He has acquired two young backcourt assets in Sharpe and Henderson — both 20 — in the draft lottery. He signed Grant to a too-high five-year, $160-million contract that runs through 2028, perhaps to entice Lillard to stay. Days later, Lillard sought a trade that should probably have been made the previous season.

Simons, Grant, Ayton, Sharpe and Brogdon missed a combined 184 games this season. Maybe Cronin has gotten unlucky with injuries. If so, he probably figures it’s just as well, that they need more infusion of talent from the June draft. Certainly, there is a lack of veteran presence and leadership. Being young is a virtue, but at some point, the fruit has to ripen.

“Their roster wasn’t built to tank this year,” one front-office employee of another NBA club told me. “They shouldn’t be where they’re at in the standings. They might not have the right veterans in the locker room. I don’t know if they have the vets who are leaders. They’re good players on their own, but …”

After a very slow start, Henderson has come on to look like the prospect most scouts expected over the final 30 games of the season.

“Everyone would have taken Scoot at No. 3,” the NBA executive said, “and he has found his rhythm the last six weeks or so.”

Give Billups and his staff credit for helping develop Camara, the 52nd pick in last year’s draft. And Walker, who averaged 8.9 points and 7.1 rebounds in his second NBA season and won’t turn 22 until July. And Duop Reath, who has emerged as a bonafide NBA player at age 27. And Dalano Banton, who in 29 games managed to average 16.7 points, 4.8 rebounds and 3.5 assists but also set an NBA record by going 0 for 15 from the 3-point line in the finale at Sacramento. Nobody in NBA history had ever taken more 3’s without a make.

Rotation guys? Looks like it. Are any of those players a starter on a championship contender? Not at this point, at least.

The Blazers own two first-round picks — theirs and Golden State’s — that currently project at No. 3 and 14 in the lottery. They also have a pair of second-round selections, giving them four of the first 40 players in what is considered a weak draft. Maybe there is some immediate help available, but more likely, help for the future.

“Joe is in a tough spot,” the NBA executive said. “He has gone all-in on young guys. It isn’t what the fans want. You’ve already invested a few years of not winning. Do you jump in the hunt or ride it out?”

Cronin will likely look to trade Brogdon — and perhaps Robert Williams, who was lost for the season to a knee injury after six games — this summer for a veteran forward.

Franchises that hit bottom and tank generally recover after three bad years. It happened with Cleveland, Atlanta and Houston in recent years. Oklahoma City needed only two years, rebounding after seasons of 22-50 and 24-58 to go 40-42 last season and 52-23 so far this season.

San Antonio is the aberration. After 22 straight winning seasons and five championships, Gregg Popovich’s Spurs have suffered five losing campaigns in a row, including 22-60 each of the last two seasons. With Victor Wembanyana aboard, that should turn around soon.

The teams that have sustained success include the L.A. Clippers, who have 13 straight winning seasons, and Boston, which has nine (including one at .500). Neither of those teams have won titles, though. Golden State has missed out on a winning season once in 11 years — going 15-50 in an injury-marred, Covid-shortened 2019-20 season — while winning four titles.

Portland was once a perennial playoff team. Its fans got used to it. Now, they are getting used to losing, and it looks like it’s not going to turn around any time soon. At some point, absentee owner Jody Allen might decide the general manager should answer for some of her team’s shortcomings.

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