FanPost

What will the 2018 NBA Offseason look like for the Blazers?

For more than a decade now, the Portland Trail have consistantly been a team stuck in No Man's land. Never good enough to compete for a championship, nor bad enough to get a top pick. The only times the Blazers weren't in No Man's Land was the times where they were at the way bottom of the league record wise, and were lucky enough to land All Star players such as LaMarcus Aldridge, Brandon Roy, Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum. Yet even with our best team record wise in the last 10 years (2008-09; 54 wins, 2013-14; 54 wins) we were only able to get as far as the second round.

Being in Portland, the Blazers don't have much going for them when it comes to convincing big name Free Agents to come sign with them. The only real way was to lose your mind and overpay five players in one summer (Ed Davis, Moe Harkless, Evan Turner, Meyers Leonard, and, yes, CJ McCollum. Despite being an incredible player, is he really worth 106.6 Million dollars for 4 years?). This, as you might have guessed, is what Neil Olshey decided to do. And now, the Blazers find themselves not able to trade anybody on their roster except for Dame, CJ or Nurk, which Olshey, being Neil Olshey, is not willing to do. So on the day where everybody thought the Blazers were finally going to make a major move for a star, Portland was only able to trade one of our lone bright spots on our team in Noah Vonleh for cash. So my name is Theo, and we will now be predicting the offseason of the Portland Trail Blazers.

Lets start on February 19th, 2018, the current date. The Blazers are coming off a huge win over one of, if not, the greatest team of time 123-117. Damian Lillard and Kevin Durant went head to head, with Lillard going off for 44 and KD scoring 50. I do think that it is time for ESPN to fire Bill Walton. So that's the first move the Blazers make. They convince the NBA to sign me as the new ESPN commentator instead of Bill Walton. Seriously, I needed to turn off the volume for that game. Not only is he annoying, but he was such a Warriors fan, or, maybe just a Blazer Hater (more likely). But with the negativity coming out of Bill Walton's mouth gone forever, the Blazers build enough confidence to finish the season with a record of 47-35, placing 6th in the West. Their first round matchup against the third seeded San Antonio Spurs looked like one the Blazers might be able to take. Kawhi Leonard was still recovering from his injury, and never really was the same for the rest of that season. But at the end of the day, the Spurs are still the Spurs, and despite Portland taking them to seven games, San Antonio pulls away in the final minutes of the final game to send Portland home once again.

Before the Blazers make any moves involving players, Paul Allen must find a way to deal with Olshey (Holy Cow I just created the second greatest slogan in Blazer history. I can see it now; Find a way, to deal with Olshey. Or even better, To deal with Neil...). Paul decides that he really loved my voice when watching a game on ESPN, and he convinces me to be their new GM after firing Neil Olshey. And I agreed.

Its time to fix things up. I shop the Evan Turner and Moe Harkless for days, yet nobody wants to take on their awful contracts. Finally though, the Oklahoma City Thunder find themselves with a reasonable amount of cap space after Paul George left them for the Lakers, and they are in need of another ball handler off the bench to back up Russell Westbrook. Here's my opinion on Evan Turner; I feel as if he can be a very solid role player off the bench for another team. And I feel that his struggles has a lot to do with coaching. Turner is a ball handler, a facilitator, that can run your offense. When you put him in the starting lineup with Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum, then Turner becomes useless. He can't shoot for his life, and there's really no reason for him to handle the ball when you have Dame and CJ out on the court with him at the same time. On a team like the Thunder, where he can come off the bench and keep the offense flowing while Westbrook sits, I do believe Evan could really thrive. Will he ever be worth the absurd amount of moolah he's making? No. But he can be a valuable player for a team off the bench. Anyway, I flipped Evan and Moe to the Thunder for absolutely nothing.

Now we have enough cap space to sign a free agent. But here comes the big decision that I was forced to make. Do we give contending one more go and try to sign a free agent, or do we blow it up and trade everybody? For any Blazer fan, the second option is a scary one. Our only three players that we really can trade are CJ, Nurk, and, yes, Damian Lillard. I know that trading Dame sounds insane, but if we really choose the rebuilding route, then maybe getting rid of Lillard is the right move. I understand that he plans to stay loyal to this team no matter what, but if we trade CJ and Nurk for some young pieces, then we will be wasting Dame's prime on a team that, in the stacked Western Conference, likely won't make the playoffs for multiple years depending on the assets given to us in return for McCollum and Nurkic. But Lillard is good enough to score 29 points per game on a team by himself, which gets us to around the 10th seed. That's not low enough to get a relevant draft pick either. Lillard also brings by far the most assets back in a trade. Some hypothetical trade idea could be with the Minnesota Timberwolves where we trade Dame in a package including Andrew Wiggins, Jeff Teague and every single pick they have. I'm not necessarily suggesting that we even take the rebuilding route, but if we do, trading Lillard may have to come next.

But I decide to give it another go, run with the same core for one more season and play from there. We did sign Aaron Gordon to a reasonable deal, as he wanted out of Orlando because, well, because it's the Magic, and seriously, why would you want to play for the Magic? We re-sign Nurk to another reasonable deal and now run with a starting lineup of Dame at the one, CJ at the two, Aminu at the three, AG at the four and Jusuf Nurkic at the five down low. Gordon is still young and could seriously become the piece that helps us get over the hump and into contention.

And that is where we leave off. The Blazers look very good, yet not good enough to get a top 3 seed in the West. They signed a young, talented player who can help them in the future, but the decision in the 2019 offseason between keeping or trading away our Dames and our CJs remains unanswered. Plus, Paul Allen soon realised that despite me doing an amazing job in my first offseason as a GM, I was a 12 year old, so he fired me. Overall, Portland remains fairly quite, yet the trio of Dame, CJ, and AG would be very fun to watch.

So what moves do you think the Trail Blazers will make this offseason? Leave your opinions in the comment section below!