Neil Olshey’s Plan is to Wait

Neil Olshey recently sat down with Brooke Olzendam for a wide-ranging, 30 minute interview that was released by the team last week.

Dane Carbaugh from NBC Sports shares his reaction to some of Olshey’s comments, and shares what he clearly sees as Portland’s plan for the next 12 months or so.

Carbaugh believes that Olshey’s strategy is to wait out the rest of the Western Conference:

The justification for this plan — which mostly involves doing nothing — is twofold.

First, Golden State’s dominance in the West is unchallenged, even if Olshey was unwilling to admit that to Olzendam during the above interview. Internally, the Blazers know Golden State won’t run into real salary problems until the 2019-20 season, and it appears they would rather sit tight as that issue resolves itself.

Second, Olshey has decided to try to reduce the salary cap figure simply as a mechanism of being a good financial planner. And, if we believe the wait-and-see strategy to be true, then tighter budgeting must follow in kind. There is no sense for the Blazers to spend over the cap more than they need to if they agree to concede the next couple of years in the West.

Publicly they’ll never admit that, but it’s exactly what they’re doing.

Carbaugh also speculates, based on his past moves, whether Olshey is being wise testing the patience of Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum:

Perhaps most interestingly, now that he’s in Chief Financial Officer mode, it’s unclear whether Olshey will ever see his vision for this team to fruition.

Turner has just two more seasons left on his albatross of a contract, but after that comes Lillard and McCollum, due for extensions the season after. Olshey is taking a serious gamble using the patience of his two stars as betting chips by managing the luxury tax and trying to develop small-time talent as he clock-watches the Warriors.

You can read the entirety of Carbaugh’s article here.