Reddit thread on what changes the Blazers need to win a title

My take:

Portland's entire organization is built upon the philosophy of "don't lose" vs. "Win". Small market mentality and economics. Instead of having steady revenue streams from major media markets, they have to rely more on local ticket sales, merchandise, and sponsorships. That means angling all player acquisitions towards maintaining a certain level of competing without taking risks that non-major market teams MUST do to compete at the highest levels, unless they are extremely lucky over the course of several drafts.

If Portland were to take the risks necessary and failed (as happened right before and during the "Jailblazers" era where GM Bob Whitsitt tried to capitalize on the success of the 99 and 2000 playoff runs by adding players who were former stars such as Shawn Kemp, but chemistry never jelled and as a result the team was sub-.500 for several seasons), that would jeopardize their main local revenue stream, and, in the case of the mid-2000s, even caused the team to be rumored to abandon the Portland market and move. The team will never take those risks again, so they will be perpetually stuck in that 5-8 seed range, always being good enough to be a "dark horse scappy underdog" (which feeds into the fanbase's general sense of lack of respect and an "us against the world" mindset, which sells tickets), but never break that ceiling into the upper echelon of the Western Conference. Occassionally they'll squeak into the 2nd round of the playoffs, or catch lightning in a bottle and make the WCF (as happened in 2019, when they caught a too-young, too-soon Denver Nuggets team), but the talent disparity was such a gulf that they were swept easily by the Warriors.

This year, in all reality, the Blazers should have offered every player not named Damian Lillard to Houston for James Harden. Those are the kind of rare opportunities that Portland looks in the face and then squanders because they don't want to risk their guaranteed gravy-train.

As a Blazer fan, who witnessed the team win a Championship in 1977 as a child and would kill for that feeling again, it is very frustrating to have to come to grips with this reality year after year.

 

Hmm. Same vague writing at the same IQ level.

Listen, Armstrong. You're not supposed to comment here on your own Reddit posts.

 

Perpetually stuck in the 5-8 seed range??? We were 3 seed in 2017-18 and 2018-19. Last season, we played like 3 seed in the bubble. This season, we are at 4th while injured and still learning how to play with each other. Climbing up to 3 or higher is not out of the question. We only have 2 more losses than Lakers/Clippers/Jazz. Also- the Warriors did sweep the Blazers but not easily. We led by 17 or 18 points in Games 2-4. We just had trouble closing because Kanter's shoulder was done and Dame's ribs were separated.

 

I wish I had your naive optimism year after fucking soul-crushing year. I honestly do.

 

The original post was not mine. I thought about that response for over an hour before I wrote it. The reality of it absolutely sucks. I want the Blazers to win a title again in my lifetime, more than most things I want in my life. But I see very little sign that the organization (not the players) has as much want and zeal of attaining that goal as I do.

 

Just look at the facts man. In your mind, we’re 5-8 every year but that’s not reality.

 

That is a very good regular season number. 20 years since winning a game in the Conference Finals is another number.....that isn't so good given all that regular season success.

 

They'd need to get really lucky in the draft.

 

Eh, if Oden or Roy had stayed healthy (let alone both) there's a pretty good chance we have a championship in the past 12 years, which is more than most teams can say.

We lost three franchise-level talents (if you also count Aldridge) for absolutely nothing. Zero compensation. Look at any championship team and try to imagine what that would do to them. We also were in prime position to contend until Wes blew an Achilles.

We've had our shots, and we just got really unlucky with injury (and Aldridge's weird mindset). We might have lost anyway, but we'll never know. We lost before ever really facing an opponent. But we were in position.

 

In the last 30 years only one small market team has won it all. Your analysts on revenue is a good one just like smaller markets that cant rely on volume to offset margin, so they have to maintain the higher profit margin.

 

Neil has had a lot of hits in the draft (Dame/CJ/every single second round pick, etc). While most of his miscues have come in free agency, the one big DRAFT strikeout that isn't getting as much attention as it should was in 2017. And I think we could have been contenders for a title if we had hit on this draft.

We made a great move to be in position to trade into the lottery that year but absolutely blew that pick and I think it was the difference maker that could have made this current team a title contender.

10. Collins
13. Mitchell
14. Adebayo
19. J. Collins
22. J. Allen
23. Anunoby

And we had another whiff, albeit not as costly at the 26th pick:

26. Swanigan
27. Kuzma
29. D. White (just signed a 4yr, 73 million deal with the Spurs)
30. J. Hart
42. T. Bryant

Can you imagine if we had picked Bam instead of Zach?! Or Mitchell, who would have made CJ expendable to land an equivalent player at a position of need? There were FIVE guys picked after Collins that are unequivocally better than him in the next 13 picks.

This is gonna get lost in history.

 

some time toward the end of the 2014-15 season, Neil Olshey decided he was going to go all-in on a Dame/CJ team. He was going to make them the featured duo, and build the team around them making sure CJ had a major role by NOT adding a competent backup PG

since then, he has held CJ untouchable in any trade discussions that could have brought in much better players. Portland will never contend with CJ as option 1b. But CJ will always be option 1b as long as Olshey is GM. It's a treadmill powered by Dame's prime

 

well, you're inevitably going to get pushback about "hindsight is 20/20" and "other teams missed on those players too!" and "just wait till Zach is healthy", but revisiting past drafts is always a fun exercise IMO

by the way, I wouldn't give Olshey much credit for Dame. The reporting tends to confirm that the Blazer scouting staff and Paul Allen were locked on to Dame well before Olshey was hired

there have been more misses than 2017:

11 Meyers Leonard
34 Jae Crowder
35 Draymond Green
39 Khris Middleton

10 CJ McCollum
15 Giannis Antetokounmpo
27 Rudy Gobert
***************************************




19 Malik Beasley
20 Caris LeVert
27 Pascal Siakam
29 Dejounte Murray
36 Malcolm Brogdon

Olshey is much better at evaluating perimeter players. He sucks at evaluating bigs

 

I may be late to the party but are Kingspeed and KSF-ERIC the same person? Sure seem to post identical takes

 

I don't think this one is fair, at least the players you've highlighted. This is literally the definition of "everyone missed on them"...they were all second-rounders, no GM had them as serious prospects and for sure no one had any of them on their radar for a lottery pick. This is like taking your favorite team to task for "missing" on Tom Brady--major outliers aren't misses.

That said, Leonard was still a poor pick at 11. But not because Olshey missed on Draymond Green or Khris Middleton at 11.

 

Yes, they are. Name change, I believe.

 

I don't disagree but I was talking more about missed opportunities than mis-management of the draft in reply to illimatic