Blazers end another forgetful season — and now the work begins
Chauncey Billups says the Blazers need veterans and more size to compete at a higher level next season
Updated 4/10/2023 8:50 AM
Here is what I think lies ahead for the Trail Blazers as they plow through the upcoming offseason:
• If they get the No. 1 pick in the June 22 draft — they have a 10.5 percent chance — they will take 7-4 French wunderkind Victor Wembanyama. And keep him.
• If they don’t get No. 1, they will consider packaging two first-round picks, including the one they own of New York’s — let’s say it’s No. 5 and No. 23 — in a deal for a center or power forward. That could involve Jusuf Nurkic, or perhaps Anfernee Simons. Regardless, look for Simons to be dealt somewhere this summer to make way for Shaedon Sharpe as the team’s starting shooting guard.
• The Blazers will sign forward Jerami Grant to a multi-year free-agent contract at big numbers, though below the maximum.
• General manager Joe Cronin will try to stock his bench with proven veterans to provide more support for Damian Lillard as he enters his golden years. Winning while Lillard is in his prime remains a priority.
Sunday was a day for reflection but more so for looking ahead for the Blazers, who ended their abomination of a season with a 157-101 shellacking to Golden State Sunday before a sellout crowd of 19,731 at Moda Center. Not sure if it was Fan Appreciation Day, but about half of them were wearing Warriors colors and cheering for the defending champs.
It was neither the most points ever scored against Portland nor the franchise’s most one-sided defeat. Doug Moe’s breakneck Denver Nuggets beat the Blazers 162-143 in 1981. Indiana walloped the local quintet 124-59 in 1998, a 65-point difference.
But the Warriors’ 55 points Sunday were the most points scored in the first quarter of a game in NBA history — ever. Coach Steve Kerr used no player more than 22 minutes in his team’s final warm-up for the playoffs. The Blazers’ makeshift lineup offered the resistance of tissue paper in a hurricane.
Portland, lost for the 15th time in 17 games, finishing at 33-49. It was a six-game improvement over its 27-55 record the previous season, but more importantly a successful tank job by the Blazers, who are now seeded No. 5 for the May 16 lottery.
The Blazers know more about tanks than the folks at George Morlan Plumbing, having taken the intentional gas pipe two years in a row to improve their draft status. It has been an eyesore for Chauncey Billups, who has presided over the debacle both years. Not what he signed up for when he took on his first head coaching position.
“I’m glad it’s over — very much so,” Billup said in his post-game wrap-up of the season. “You know how I feel about losing, about this (tanking) — I don’t like it.
“It’s been a tough two years. I never thought it would be like this. We’re going to try to do everything necessary that none of us are in this position again. It’s no fun. This really sucks.”
Nothing about the Blazers’ season was fun, other than Lillard’s banner year and Shaedon Sharpe’s rookie emergence. As he looks toward his second season as GM, Cronin knows all patience has run out — not just that of Lillard, who turns 33 in July.
“We have to start taking big steps forward to keep us all appeased,” Cronin said. “We don’t want to go through this anymore. It’s time for us to start winning games. We want to go into the offseason with that mentality, and not just for him but for all of us. We don’t want to have another year like this one.
“Time to turn the page for us … we have a ton of work to do.”
The beef about Terry Stotts’ Trail Blazer teams was that they played lousy defense. So have Billups’ teams. This season they finished 28th in defensive rating, ahead only of sad-sacks Houston and San Antonio. Portland yielded 117.5 points per game, and opponents shot nearly 50 percent from the field.
Billups argues that early in the season, when the Blazers’ roster was healthy, “we were pretty darn good defensively. It held us in there for the first 15 to 17 games, because our offense wasn’t making shots. Then things started to change. The rotation started to change because of injuries, and our defense started going down.”
Puzzling, though, is that it doesn’t take great talent to play solid defense. It takes savvy and smarts but also toughness and determination and effort. The Blazers haven’t shown any consistency doing that on the defensive end under Billups. Cronin is banking that 6-5 Matisse Thybulle — acquired at midseason — will help change that, and he is certainly a good piece. But he’ll need a lot of help.
The Blazers have a chance to draft two good players, but rookies rarely make a big impact, and they have committed to trying to win now, while Lillard is still in his prime. The Blazers’ meal ticket was candid Sunday about growing tired of the “build-for-the-future” approach.
“I just ain’t interested in that, and it’s not a secret,” he said. “I don’t have much of an appetite for building with guys two, three years away from really going after it. If the route is to do that, that’s not my route. We’re all in line with doing what we have to do to put a team together that we can actually go out and get something done.”
Said Billups: “He has the right to feel that way. We owe it to him to give him a chance. He has been too good for this fan base. Everything he feels should be considered should be done.”
Billups was asked if the Blazers need only to “tweak” things or to make some major changes.
“We’ve done the tweak thing a few times,” he said. “We have to be more aggressive than that if we want to do right by the best player in the history of this organization.”
Unless it’s Wembanyama, the Blazer picks could be included in a deal for a veteran or veterans. There may be several trades involving players, draft picks — Portland owns five futures in the second round — and trade exceptions.
“The goal is to get better as soon as possible,” Cronin said. “We’ll see what value (the Blazers’ first pick) has. It’s time for us to start moving quicker toward having a roster that is ready to compete at the highest level. If that means it’s using the (first) pick or other picks in deals, we’re open-minded to that. Dame’s game is going to age beautifully. We are going to try to maximize that.”
I give Billups mostly a pass, and an “I” grade, for his first two seasons. Injuries have been a factor, but also an incomplete bench.
“I didn’t deal him a good hand this season,” Cronin said. “I didn’t do him any favors by giving him the lack of depth that would have given him sustainability in the wake of our injuries. We struggled on defense again this year and just didn’t have the personnel to get that done. We have to get a deeper, more balanced bench established. We are going to be more veteran-laden than we were this season.”
The 6-3 Simons averaged 21.1 points this season, but the way the 6-7 Sharpe has emerged, the Blazers will likely deem one or the other expendable. Asked if Sharpe and Simons can play together, Billups said, “I’m not sure. Those decisions will be made by people in a higher position than me. Those two guys are really good young players. Both of them can be All-Stars. I’m pretty sure they have a ton of value everywhere.”
It’s possible that Shaedon Sharpe, who doesn’t turn 20 until June, becomes Portland’s starting shooting guard next season
The decision is not above Cronin’s pay grade.
“It’s something we have to look at,” he said. “It’s a great problem to have. They’re both mega-talented. Their games are different, but they play similar positions. You have to figure that out. Are there other holes you have to fill instead?
“This will be a big summer for (Sharpe). He needs to get out there and play. His learning curve has been so quick, I wouldn’t put it past him to be ready very soon, and I mean in impacting winning and carrying the load to some extent. I did not foresee him picking things up this quickly, this easily.”
When Nurkic was good, he was very good this season. But the 7-footer was injured a couple of times, often played poorly and looked like a guy a little too content in the first year of the four-year, $70 million contract he signed last offseason. The Blazers wound up being weak on the interior at both ends, with Grant — a natural small forward — playing the four.
“We’ve lacked size since I’ve been here,” Billups said. “That’s a big thing. We’ll do a better job with this as we try to build this thing in a proper way, but it hurts you. We haven’t lacked heart. But when that ball goes up, it becomes who can get there first. We lose that (battle). It’s been a problem. We need to get bigger.”
Lillard said he knows big-time players throughout the league who would like to join him in Portland.
“Guys who move the needle and want to do it,” he said. “But knowing that and actually making something to make that a reality is a completely separate thing.”
That would almost surely have to happen via trade, since signing Grant would put the Blazers at the luxury tax threshold, which they intend to stick to.
Cronin said there are “a handful” of top-level players he would love to target.
“Probably three of the five, (their organizations) don’t entertain your call a whole lot,” he said.
Lillard would like to think Cronin can land a talent or two who can make a difference. He’d like to see the Blazers improve their lot enough to become a factor in the Western Conference again.
“I see a road to what we could do,” he said. “There’s a difference in, ‘We can do this, we can do that,’ and actually doing it.
“I’m always optimistic, but I’ve been in the league long enough to know things don’t always work out the way you want. There are a lot of moving pieces. Over the last few years, I go into it with these high expectations that, ‘All right, it’s going to be different.’ The optimism is there again. But it’s time to get the work done.”
I’m sure Lillard is tired of talking about it. And Blazer fans are tired of hearing about it.
Everyone wants results. The ball is in Joe Cronin’s court. Again.
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