Olshey quickly blossoms into leader and voice of franchise

Neil Olshey prefers to operate outside the limelight, so he doesn’t allow himself to be propped up in front of cameras and microphones very often.
But when he does, it’s often memorable. He had barely moved into the Trail Blazers’ general manager office last summer when he dropped those unforgettable “Wrath of Kahn” and “mosquito bites and frost bite” quips. And no Blazers fan is likely to forget last week’s staunch and steadfast defense of franchise cornerstone LaMarcus Aldridge during the team’s annual media day.
“There’s no question that Neil has a presence and I think that’s important,” coach Terry Stotts said. “He’s not always around, but you know he’s there.”

It’s been 15 months since Olshey took over the most toxic GM job in the NBA, and in that short time he’s overhauled the roster and coaching staff, reshaped the strength and training staff, tweaked the video department, spearheaded a remodel of the practice facility and recalibrated the culture of the franchise. Every move, big and small alike, has pushed the Blazers away from their unsettled past and inched them closer to achieving his grand vision — becoming a player-first organization that features stability, success and staying power.

Olshey’s imprint is everywhere. Quickly, he has blossomed into the leader and voice of a franchise that so desperately needed one.

Since his unfathomable axing of Kevin Pritchard hours before the 2010 NBA draft, owner Paul Allen has recycled general managers as if he worked at the bottle deposit station at New Seasons. Rich Cho lasted 10 months. Chad Buchanan endured an interim tag for a year. All the while, former team president Larry Miller was an uncomfortable liaison between the parties. None of the men were completely comfortable in their roles or in serving as the voice of the organization.
Olshey was born to do both.

With big-picture vision, moxie, an eye for talent and a unique ability to appease a billionaire owner, players and coaches with equal savvy, Olshey has steered the franchise into as stable a position as it has been in recent memory.

“I think Neil and the scouts have done a great job improving the talent,” Allen said, before adding, “I think we’ve turned the page and we’re in a new era here …”

The master plan​

There’s a message written on a marker board in the assistant coaches' office at the Blazers’ practice facility that reads: “Good is the enemy. Great is the goal.” It’s a fitting mantra for this new era. The Blazers have missed the playoffs each of the past two seasons — and seven of the last 10 — and have not won a postseason series since 2000, the longest drought in the Western Conference.

Since Day One, every move Olshey has made has been designed to create stability and a winning culture in the organization. He laid the foundation for his rebuild during his first two months on the job, drafting eventual Rookie of the Year Damian Lillard and promising center Meyers Leonard with first-round picks, re-signing small forward Nicolas Batum, and hiring Stotts. Then he sat back and used his first year to evaluate every aspect of the organization, plotting areas to overhaul.

Olshey gutted the team’s long-time strength and training staff, which had become a lighting rod for criticism in recent years, hiring Chris Stackpole and Ben Kenyon to install a new philosophy focusing on proactive maintenance and injury prevention. Then he retooled the video department, hiring Jonathan Yim as the team’s video coordinator. All the while, Olshey spearheaded a $4 million practice facility remodel.

View full sizeNeil Olshey's grand vision is a player-first organization that features stability, success and staying power.Thomas Boyd/The Oregonian
By the time it’s finished next month, the Blazers’ facility will be first-rate and state of the art, featuring everything from a plush 30-seat theater for watching game film to a new dining area that includes a private chef and nutritionist. There will be a massage room, a barbershop, a new locker room, a new weight and training room and a new treatment area that looks and feels like a spa. Portland has never been a sought-after destination for free agents, so Olshey is trying to create a “sanctuary” for players that will help elevate Portland’s league-wide reputation.

“It’s really important to create the best environment possible, so we can transition to a players-first culture,” Olshey said. “When these guys go out and they talk to guys or they tweet guys or they text guys or whatever, they can say, ‘Nobody takes better care of players than the Portland Trail Blazers. This is the best place I’ve been. They have the best resources, best environment, best building, best home crowd and everybody’s got our back up here.’
"That’s what players want to hear. And your players become your best recruiters. We’re creating the best basketball environment we can create, so this will become a top-tier basketball destination.”

With the infrastructure in place, Olshey can then work his magic. He didn’t pull off an earth-shattering blockbuster this offseason — when’s the last time that happened in Portland? — but his moves were savvy, and there is little debate he “moved the needle.” By drafting CJ McCollum and Allen Crabbe, by trading for Robin Lopez and Thomas Robinson, by signing Mo Williams, Dorell Wright and Earl Watson to free agent contracts, he molded an intriguing roster featuring a blend of promising youth, established NBA talent and depth.

And most impressive, Olshey did not sacrifice any of the team’s long-term flexibility to build the roster. With the exception of Batum and the Blazers’ first- and second-year players, no one is locked to the team beyond the 2014-15 season.
It’s all by design.

Last summer, Olshey and his staff peered into the future. They knew they had roughly $12 million in cap room to play with, and as they analyzed the free agent classes of 2013 and 2014, they didn’t see any matches in 2014. So they decided their best shot to build a better roster was sooner rather than later. They initially chased San Antonio Spurs restricted free agent center Tiago Splitter —who is represented by the same agency as franchise cornerstone LaMarcus Aldridge — and had the parameters of a deal in place. But after signing restricted free agent Roy Hibbert to an offer sheet the previous summer, only to see the Indiana Pacers match it, the Blazers switched gears after they learned San Antonio planned to retain its big man.

Olshey traded for Lopez, then accentuated the roster with veteran talent. The moves fulfilled all of his offseason ambitions: He added a defensive-minded center, he built depth, he created competition on the roster, he elevated the Blazers’ playoff chances, he stimulated an environment where they team’s young players can develop while winning and — as important as anything — he satisfied his two-time All-Star. Despite Olshey’s media day bluster, Aldridge would not have been happy without significant upgrades.

“We’re stronger, we’re deeper, we’ve got a good mix of youth and veterans, we’ve got long-term flexibility, we have the ability to keep this group together — because we control the destiny of almost all the players on our roster — and we haven’t given up any assets to do it,” Olshey said. “We maximized the cap room and the assets that we did have, and now we move into the next phase, which is developing the assets that we’ve acquired. So we’ve turned C and D assets into B AND B-plus assets, and now we’ve got to get into the next phase, which is cultivating all of those players to try to put ourselves in a position where we can make moves or win with this group.”

Essentially, Olshey has created two potential arcs for the Blazers. In a perfect world, he can sit back and watch the Blazers mature into a winner, with young talent like Lillard, Batum, McCollum, Leonard and Robinson developing into difference-makers alongside veteran talent. Then he can simply re-sign the roster as is, tweaking pieces here and there through free agent signings and trades. Or, if the youth doesn’t bloom, if the players don’t jell, he can use his improved collection of assets to make a trade or spend his future salary cap space to chase a free agent.

In two years, the Blazers will hit a proverbial fork in the road. They will either be the new small market envy of the NBA — a San Antonio or Oklahoma City — that has accumulated enough talent through the draft to field a contender. Or they are going to have the cap space and assets to build a new roster, similar to what Houston did this summer. Unlike Orlando and Philadelphia, which blew up rosters and entered what could be a long and arduous rebuild, Olshey is trying to rebuild and develop young talent while he wins.

“Nobody wants to live through the asset-accumulation phase,” Olshey said. “And we’re trying to do both. We’re trying to win while we do it. It’s a lot easier if you’re just going to strip mine your roster and accumulate assets and take a three- to five-year approach toward aggregating assets and seeing how it goes. The master plan is building stability. Win now, create long-term flexibility, but have the stability that we won’t have to live through this for a half decade. We’re not where we need to be. But we’re a lot closer than we were.”

Learning to love Portland​

Olshey, 48, spent the first half of his life in New York, then nearly 20 years in Los Angeles, so he’s never lived in a laid-back, keep-things-weird environment like Portland. He grew up riding subways in the hustle and bustle of New York, and his boisterous, fast-talking, domineering personality is more suited to the fast-paced lifestyles of his previous locales. And while you’re not going to see Olshey roaming Portland in a flannel shirt or sporting a beard, he’s learning to appreciate and enjoy the subtle things that make Portland special.

“I (recently) went a week and a half without shaving,” he said, chuckling. “I was embarrassed. It’s all white. I looked in the mirror and I could feel it, but I couldn’t see it.”

Away from the basketball sanctuaries of the Moda Center and the Blazers’ practice facility, Olshey has had a challenging transition from Los Angeles. His wife, Leslie Radakovich, put a successful career as a television producer on hold when they relocated the family, and Olshey’s two young sons, Connor and James, encountered a culture shock when they left the only home they’d ever known. They grew up near the picture-perfect sand in Manhattan Beach, dipping their toes in the Pacific Ocean whenever they wanted. In the snap of a finger, those sunny beaches were replaced with rain and mountains, and their customary school clothes — Crocs, board shorts and T-shirts — became pants, sweaters and raincoats.

Olshey often laments the loss of his beloved sun and cracks jokes about being Vitamin D deficient.

But spending a summer in Oregon has helped ease his adjustment. He and his family have roamed the city, visited the coast, stayed in Sunriver and explored Oswego Lake. Olshey said he finally has been able to “see the beauty of Portland.” And as he and his family settled into their home in Lake Oswego, as he traveled around the area, a funny thing happened: Olshey grew to appreciate the people and the city’s rabid dedication to the Blazers. What’s more, this passion and these people haven’t simply affected his family life — they’ve also affected his job.

“You hold yourself to a higher standard because there’s much more of a commitment on a community level to the team,” Olshey said. “You don’t want to let everybody down. So we're going to build this team taking into consideration the passion of the Trail Blazers fan base. You’re not going to make bad moves for short-term results just to keep people happy on a short-term basis, but you realize you're on the clock.
"It really is a place where people care about the Trail Blazers beyond, they are fans and they want to win the game. They really care about the brand and the organization and what it means to the city of Portland. So I think it does adjust things with the type of guys you bring here. I really do. I think when you make decisions, that’s a factor.”

Olshey is quick to credit his staff for the Blazers’ roster rebuild. He’s eager to praise Stotts and his coaching staff. But make no mistake, this is Olshey’s team now.

His imprint, his vision — his voice — is everywhere.

“I think every general manager has their own personality, they have their own way of going about business,” Stotts said. “But I think what Neil has shown here is that he is definitely the leader of the basketball division. And things are done the way they are done because of him. He has a high basketball acumen for evaluating basketball talent, I think he understands how to put a team together, he understands the league. He’s knowledgeable, he knows his stuff and he has us heading in the right direction.”

-- Joe Freeman


http://www.oregonlive.com/blazers/i...tml?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

 

Only one comment?

I thought this was a great article and Olshey is a damn good GM.

 

I wonder what Olshey could have done with RLEC?