3 Portland Trail Blazers who definitely won’t be back next season
By Ian Levy
The Portland Trail Blazers will, once again, spend the offseason trying to build a winner around Damian Lillard. That means these guys are probably gone.
The Portland Trail Blazers went big in the offseason, trading for Jerami Grant and resetting for a competitive run to help Damian Lillard to make the most of the twilight of his career. Nine months later, they’re more than 10 games below 0.500, all but mathematically eliminated from the playoffs and have shut down Lillard for the rest of the year.
All that sets the table for another attempted reset this offseason, without a ton to work with. Lillard, Anfernee Simons and Jusuf Nurkic are under contract for roughly a combined $90 million. The team has already reportedly offered Grant a hefty extension that will chew up most of the rest of their cap space.
The Trail Blazers have their own pick, currently with the sixth-best odds of ending up at No. 1, and can expect another season of development from both Simons and Shaedon Sharpe. But other than that, tinkering at the margins will be the primary levers they have to pull for improvement. That means cutting the dead weight from this roster and finding inexpensive role players they can use to upgrade.
These three Trail Blazers almost certainly won’t be back
3. Ryan Arcidiacono
Arcidiacono arrived in Portland as part of the Josh Hart trade with the New York Knicks but hasn’t done much to make an impact. Since joining the Trail Blazers he’s appeared in just nine games for a total of 146 minutes, shooting just 25.0 percent from the field. He’s filled a role on this injury-riddled team as they list into the offseason but he’s an unrestricted free agent. This summer, the Blazers will likely fill his roster spot with a guard who’s younger, has more immediate upside or both.