Portland Trail Blazers interim general manager Joe Cronin decided about four months ago that the best course of action for the franchise was to make moves and decisions that would create flexibility and garner a high draft pick to retool the roster around superstar Damian Lillard.
That meant losing. A lot. And badly.
It was NBA tanking at its finest.
But with the 16th worst season now in the rearview mirror, Cronin and coach Chauncey Billups are on the clock to deliver fans a winning product. They must prove that trading away franchise cornerstone CJ McCollum and enduring blowout losses on a nearly nightly basis for six weeks was worth the suffering for fans, many of whom paid top dollar for an NBA-level product.
On Monday, both men faced reporters at the team’s exit interviews to discuss the end of a season that saw the Blazers (27-55) finish with the sixth-worst record in the NBA. And as they broached the future, they did so with an air of confidence that a season of misery could lead to something better in the future.
“I feel good about it,” Billups said. “I think that we have an opportunity that I don’t think that this organization has ever had. To be able to step it back just this one season and be able to get pretty good, pretty fast.”
The NBA has evolved into a league that occasionally rewards losing. Bad teams net higher draft picks, providing a chance for struggling franchises to score a future All-Star. The Blazers chased that path in December, after Lillard was sidelined with a severe abdominal injury and McCollum suffered a collapsed lung, sending the team to a 2-11 record with no chance to contend.
By the Feb. 10 trade deadline, McCollum, Norman Powell and Robert Covington were gone, Lillard had undergone surgery and was shut down for the season, and the Blazers had decided that losing would be more beneficial than fighting for a berth into the play-in round.
Although this strategy might ultimately pay off, it doesn’t mean Cronin always felt at ease with the path he chose.
“I still feel uncomfortable about it,” he said. “We have a really competitive group. We didn’t want to lose ballgames. Sometimes it’s necessary. Sometimes you have to go with your youth movement ... This, theoretically is a really quick step backward. We’re not looking at two, three, four years of this. So, that makes it easier. But as far as the discomfort, the willingness to accept losing, that was really hard for us and continues to be.”
The path to simply becoming competitive again won’t require much. After all, most of the crew that finished the season 2-21 will not be in the regular rotation next season.
Lillard is on the road to a full recovery and has already spoken about how much better his body feels after sitting out the last three months of the season. Josh Hart, Justise Winslow and Nassir Little established themselves as legitimate rotation pieces. Plus, Anfernee Simons and Jusuf Nurkic, at their best, had the Blazers winning games without Lillard before the All-Star break.
While Nurkic and Simons are not under contract for next season, the Blazers have prioritized re-signing both.
“He is the type of player that we definitely want to build around,” Cronin said of Nurkic, who will be an unrestricted free agent.
Simons will become a restricted free agent, and although Cronin said he expects the guard to receive offers from other teams, the Blazers plan to be proactive in locking him in with a long-term extension.
Simons said Monday that he plans to be in Portland long-term.
But while that core could get the Blazers back into playoff contention, it’s unlikely to make the franchise a championship contender without major additions.
“I like our talent base, we need more,” Cronin said.
Adding impact players via free agency or trade has been an Achilles heel for the franchise for decades, and something that dogged Neil Olshey, the team’s former president of basketball operations.
It’s one thing to have flexibility. It’s another to recruit and sign players that will make a difference.
Billups and Cronin said that there is no firm strategy in place beyond simply getting into the room with prospective free agents, including Lillard in the recruiting process, and trying to convince prospects they could flourish in Portland.
“It’s a generic plan where we’re going to be a united group and we’re going to be ourselves,” Cronin said. “And we’re going to be confident in that room.”
Billups said he is confident that the Blazers can lure high-end talent — and the former NBA All-Star believes he can help make it happen.
“I know and I believe that a lot of players in the league want to play for somebody like me,” he said. “I just believe that. A former player who understands the cadence of the NBA. Understands what’s important in terms of playing, rest. A dude that’s going to hold you accountable without being disrespectful towards you.”
Simons and Josh Hart agreed, saying they would eagerly sell Billups as a coach that anyone would want to play for.
Still, even with the flexibility in place — including a $21 million trade exception and some expiring contracts — Cronin is realistic that the complete retooling likely won’t happen in one summer. The bottom line, he said, is that it takes two teams to make a trade and sometimes the pieces simply don’t fit
“I think it can take multiple offseasons to completely fine-tune the roster and to completely exhaust all of the opportunities sometimes,” Cronin said. “Every team in this league has players that they covet. But if they’re not attainable, or if you don’t have the right assets, or if they’re just simply not on the market, you have to wait. So, sometimes it takes time for those opportunities to present themselves. But I also think that we’re in a place where we don’t necessarily need to hit a home run right out of the gate in order to be competitive.”
The wildcards in everything are the Blazers’ draft picks, pieces that losing added to the team’s arsenal of assets.
The Blazers will have the sixth-best chance of landing the No. 1-overall pick in this summer’s NBA draft with their own pick. They also would get New Orleans’ first-round pick should the Pelicans fail to advance to the NBA playoffs out of the play-in round, and if they don’t land a top-four pick via the lottery.
If all goes well, the Blazers would have two lottery picks to work with, which could be used to acquire young talent or be moved in trades to lure impact players from other teams.
The latter appears to be the desired path. Adding a veteran star to play alongside Lillard, 31, would make more sense than bringing in a 20-year-old with upside.
The Blazers are in win-now mode, but won’t trade the pick just to trade it.
“The preference is to maximize that pick however we do that,” Cronin said.
Cronin said they will evaluate college talent to first determine how valuable the pick is, then see what the pick could bring in return on the trade market.
“I think we all are aware that you’re more likely to win with veteran players than young players,” Cronin said. “So that will definitely be a part of our decision-making process.”
The process of getting this franchise back into the playoffs after seeing an eight-year postseason run come to an end commences now.
-- Aaron Fentress | afentress@Oregonian.com | @AaronJFentress (Twitter), @AaronJFentress (Instagram), @AaronFentress (Facebook).
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