Buck doesn’t stop at Olshey —At least, he says it doesn’t

Updated 6/9/2021 11:45 PM

Neil Olshey conducts a press conference not so much to inform the media as to educate them.

When the Trail Blazers’ president of basketball operations (general manager) believes the narrative about his team and the job he is doing is off-kilter, he’ll gather the scribes and set them straight.

Olshey has long been president of the Neil Olshey Fan Club, and when membership gets low, he does what he can to drum up the numbers.

That’s what he did during a Monday Zoom conference with local reporters, whose collective wisdom, he is quite sure, fits neatly on the head of a pin. Not only does Olshey not suffer fools gladly, he enjoys delivering a proverbial kick in the tush when he deems it necessary.

 (Here is a link to a column I wrote for the Portland Tribune during a similar lecture to media types after the 2017-18 season.)

 On Monday, in case the assembled members of the Fourth Estate had not been paying attention, Olshey laid out his credentials through nine seasons in Portland.

“We’ve made the playoffs eight years in a row,” he said. “We’ve advanced to the second round twice. We made the conference finals two years ago. We’re one of the winningest small-market organizations in the league over the last nine years.”

Let’s frame it a different way. During the Olshey era, the Blazers hold a regular-season record of 402-318 — quite respectable. The playoffs have been a different story. They have won a collective four playoff series, with no trips to the NBA Finals, and have been swept in the first round three times. Olshey’s postseason record: 22-40. That’s not what the late Paul Allen had in mind when hiring a general manager.

Olshey was annoyed at some questions and dodged entirely a couple, but not those aimed at the reasoning behind the firing of Coach Terry Stotts. To a query about how Olshey felt about his job security, he responded this way:

“The feeling is, in this instance, while in the past there might have been questions (about Olshey’s job performance), the first-round loss and the defensive rating (29) was not a product of the roster.”

Let’s examine this before Stotts gets run over by the bus Olshey threw him under.

The Blazers’ No. 29 defensive ranking among the NBA’s 30 teams this regular season was typical of many of Stotts’ nine seasons at the helm. For whatever reason, he was never able to field a strong enough defensive unit to become a formidable presence in the playoffs.

So give Olshey credit for his honesty on that subject, though it would seem he might be willing to share the blame for putting together an explosive, offense-oriented backcourt that has been undeniably a liability at the other end.

Olshey’s reference to the “past” was probably meant for 2016, when he committed a record half-billion dollars to the salaries of seven players. Damian Lillard (five years, $153 million) was a bargain at any price.

(Due to an extension signed in 2019, Lillard’s contract value now sits at an average of $43 million — six years and $258 million, roughly equal to the gross national product of Luxembourg).

The other deals have proved suspect at best. CJ McCollum was signed at four years and $106 million, which combined with a 2019 extension calls for him to make $129 million over the four seasons ending in 2024. McCollum has been a valuable commodity, but at a price reserved for franchise players.

During that unforgettable summer of 2016, Olshey matched Brooklyn’s offer sheet for Allen Crabbe (four years, $75 million) and signed free agents Evan Turner (four years, $70 million), Meyers Leonard (four years, $41 million), Moe Harkless (four years, $40 million) and even, for heaven’s sake, Festus Ezeli (two years, $15 million).

In one year, Portland went from the lowest payroll in the league to the second-highest. Olshey’s philosophy in retaining Crabbe, Leonard and Harkless — with the approval of Paul Allen — was that under the Larry Bird Exception, it created much more room beyond the salary cap to sign future players. Problem is, Olshey hasn’t been able to do much with it. Harkless and free-agent signee Al-Farouq Aminu (four years, $30 million) were key components to the run to the 2019 West finals, but the next season they were gone, replaced by Mario Hezonja and Anthony Tolliver. Hassan Whiteside was acquired via trade and gave the Blazers a terrific boost in 2019-20, but was a one-year stopgap with Jusuf Nurkic’s injury and wound up in Sacramento, where he languished this season.

Portland’s payroll heading into the 2021-22 campaign is in the neighborhood of $116 million for nine players, counting a qualifying offer for oft-injured Zach Collins and assuming Norman Powell and Derrick Jones Jr. opt out of their deals and become free agents. (This also assumes letting Carmelo Anthony and Enes Kanter walk.) The projected salary cap next season is $112 million, the luxury tax $136.6. Powell will probably command something on the order of $20 million per season. Owner Jody Allen would likely exceed the tax threshold for a title contender, but … well, you catch my drift.

But back to Olshey, who wasn’t done detailing Stotts’ coaching inefficiencies at the defensive end.

“Finishing below teams that were in rebuild and teams that weren’t the most motivated to compete late in the year was not acceptable,” Olshey said. “We have benefitted from the offensive culture from having a top-three offense (Portland finished second in offensive rating for the 2020-21 regular season). We’ve also been a victim of the defensive culture. That has to change.

“It’s a mindset as much as it is coverages. If you look around the league, teams that made big jumps at the defensive end were led in part by coaches where the player knew from Day One they were going to have to defend and be held accountable at that end of the floor, because that’s what the coach valued. As elite as we were on the offensive end and as empowering as Terry was there, we didn’t necessarily go into every game where players were going to be judged by their defensive impact.”

No argument here on that. Olshey had more to say on the subject when asked about potential qualifications of Stotts’ successor. He said it, incidentally, in a way that leaves open the chance that he’ll hire a woman or non-binary person.

“The mission is clear,” he said. “If we’re going to take the next step, they’re going to have to make an impact on the defensive end of the floor. That will be a criteria. … they will have to provide a vision. It will be about how do they get this group to get to another level open the defensive end of the floor. That will be critical in anybody advancing in the (hiring) process. They’ll have to prove they have the ability to do that in much the same way the coaching hires from last summer were able to do it — without a lot of personnel changes.”

(By the way: If you believe that the Blazers and Stotts “mutually agreed” to part ways, Olshey has some Florida swampland you might be interested in.)

Olshey also said, “We have to have more impact defenders coming off our bench as opposed to just more scorers.” If only the GM would take care of that.

When asked about Jusuf Nurkic’s cryptic comments after Game 6, Olshey first feigned that he hadn’t heard them. When the reporter described what Nurkic had said, Olshey said that isn’t what he said, then interpreted it — and probably accurately.

“We lost as a favorite in Game 6 (against Denver) with a 14-point lead late in the third quarter,” Olshey said. “He was upset (that) the way we tried to play left Nurk vulnerable. On one end of the floor, he had to defend (Nikola) Jokic straight up. I don’t know if anybody in the league can do that. He gave up a lot of points and got into foul trouble. Nurk felt he should have gotten higher usage at the other end of the floor so he could go at Nikola the way Nikola was going at him.”

Olshey has run into some bad luck with injuries to Nurkic, McCollum and Collins along the way. He has had some productive acquisitions (Anthony, Kanter, Rodney Hood, Seth Curry), and if he can find a way to keep Powell, banged an extra-base hit. There have been enough swings and misses in the playoffs, though, to leave a jury leaning toward a guilty verdict.

So far, Olshey has been bullet-proof. At some point, the onus for disappointing results must go up one rung on the food chain.

Under Paul Allen, only Bob Whitsitt (10 years) got a longer run than Olshey as the Blazers’ GM. Geoff Petrie had four years, John Nash and Kevin Pritchard three years, Steve Patterson and Rich Cho each one. Olshey will hit a full decade if he makes it through next season.

“I’m running the coaching search,” he said on the subject of his job security. “I have multiple years left on my contract. All of us — myself included — serve at the pleasure of Jody Allen. We’ll all be here as long as she sees value in our contribution.”

Jody and the Blazers’ “vice chair” — Bert Kolde, Paul’s best friend since their college days together at Wazzu — must decide if Olshey’s contribution is sufficient to retain his position. Presumably, they’ve been educated by Olshey, just like the media, that he has the right plan to guide the Blazers to title contention in the near future.

I see something different. I see smoke. I see mirrors. I see a forked tongue, wagging quickly in a very distracting way. I wonder if the powers-that-be will see that, too, and decide that a clean house is the right way to go.

Readers: what are your thoughts? I would love to hear them in the comments below.

Be sure to sign up for my emails.