As we often mention, the Portland Trail Blazers are in the midst of a summer of transition. They need to add talent to compete in a crowded NBA Western Conference field. They have assets to make moves. The Blazers are expected to be in the thick of several trade rumor discussions across the league this offseason.
Is Portland really in a good position to make a move, though? How will those assets be best used? That’s the question in front of the Blazer’s Edge Mailbag today.
Dave,
The question of the
year seems to be whether we should keep the future draft assets we have from the Bucks and maybe Orlando or whether we should bundle them for a star trade now. Which would be better for the future of our team? I’m in trade now mode but I don’t know if that’s just emotions taking over or whether it’s the best move.
Travis
You know what? You’ve got me. I’m not really sure either. In the current environment, I’m not sure it’s possible to know. But you’re right. This is the hottest topic in the Mailbag over the last couple weeks, so let’s look at it.
It’s hard to find a definitive answer because a huge wave of randomness has swept over the NBA in the last few seasons. It’s guaranteed to continue for at least another 2-3 years, leaving a six-year span (at minimum) in which outcomes are far less in the hands of individual teams than they once were. Unfortunately, the Blazers are forced to make critical decisions exactly in the middle of this wave, leaving a fair amount of uncertainty open.
The first crash of the wave came when the San Antonio Spurs created a superteam out of their infamous (and oft-mentioned by me) NBA Draft Lottery luck. Bouncing ping-pong balls gave them the roster that’s now representing the Western Conference in the NBA Finals. They’re young. They have talent redundancy. Barring injuries, they’re likely to remain intact for multiple seasons.
The essential problem for the rest of the West, of course, is that you can’t draft or trade for Victor Wembanyama. Without him, your chances of success are middling. That’s a fair issue to have, though. Somebody was going to draft Wemby; San Antonio was fine. Because the league lacked safeguards against randomly recurring high picks, though, the Spurs also got Stephon Castle and Dylan Harper in consecutive drafts. That trio probably has a reservation set for the Conference Finals, if not the NBA Finals, for the next decade.
The shadow of San Antonio (and honestly, Oklahoma City right behind them) makes you wonder whether any “win now” move is going to be worth it for Portland. Their core is young. They could technically afford to grow their young players then recruit a new bunch to add to the veterans between 2028-2030. It’s a long-range plan, but that may be as much of an asset as a detriment given the current climate. If there’s any chance that those draft assets will open the door to a legit title run, that has to be preferable to hitting a second-round playoffs ceiling for the next five years.
But we have another problem. Those same future picks just got tossed into a randomizer thanks to the new “3-2-1” lottery system adopted by the league last week. Basically, there are more lottery participants than ever, the odds for each team getting promoted are more flat and even than ever, and critically, they will now draw for all 16 lottery positions instead of drawing for the top four and seeding the remainder by reverse order of record.
Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if the league changed that system by 2009. But at least two of Portland’s major assets from Milwaukee will come due before that. So it looks very much like those picks and swaps just got thrown into a completely random drawing. We have no idea how they’ll turn out.
It’s possible that this new system benefits the Blazers, ultimately. If the Bucks end up as a mediocre non-playoffs team instead of a horribly bad one, Portland’s chances of promotion to an ultra-high pick will actually be better than they would have been in the old system. But it’s also possible that the Blazers’ odds got nerfed. We won’t know that until we see what Milwaukee does. Either way, the odds no longer dictate the proceedings strongly. It’s all random chance…almost equal random chance at that. We might as well throw those future picks onto the floor and pick them up blindfolded to determine how valuable they’ll be. That’s essentially what the league is doing now.
You can see the issue here. Current decision making based on largely-unknown future value is difficult, speculative at best. Are those future picks modest assets or franchise-changers? Who knows? Not Portland, not the people considering trading for them. The Blazers could be making a shrewd deal by trading away the picks or they could be sacrificing the next dynasty.
This combination of factors makes it impossible to come up with a definitive answer to the question. The best possible immediate gains Portland could make via trade probably won’t be able to overcome the Spurs’ lottery tyranny. But recent rules change makes catching San Antonio via the draft highly unlikely, nigh impossible. If the completely-random results didn’t do it, the prohibition against repeated high picks (which came years too late) would. Forecasting repeated success with those Milwaukee and Orlando assets is impossible, but any one of them could be the magic golden ticket.
Two years ago, this was not an issue. There was no random superteam in Texas. Lottery positioning was more predictable, with a defined floor and clear odds of getting promoted. A team like Portland could plan logically and reasonably based on those factors. Now that’s out the window. There’s no planning, no reasonable predicting…it’s mostly luck. The Blazers will take their chances trading those picks or using them, but either way it’s chance.
Like the rest of the league, most of whom are trying to answer this same question, the Blazers will step up and take their shot. The only way we’ll be able to know if they’ve done well is to look back, retroactively, after the picks are drawn. Until then, you and I will be doing the same thing the front office is doing: make the move that makes sense in the moment and hope.
Thanks for the question! If you have your own, you can send it to blazersub@gmail.com and we’ll try to answer as many as possible!
