General Manager Joe Cronin of the Portland Trail Blazers is under pressure from a large segment of the team’s fan base to swap out the old-timers on the team in favor of draft picks and/or younger contributors.
And Joe, do it before the NBA’s February 5 trade deadline, thank you very much.
Part of the impetus for this pressure is the rise of Deni Avdija, who is becoming a high-end NBA player right before our eyes. How high is hard to say, but it’s pretty danged far up there and seems to be getting higher every day. Some say he’s the leading candidate for Most Improved Player in the league this year. You won’t hear many challenges to that assertion coming from Rip City. So anyone calling the next iteration of the Blazers “Deni’s Team” has a lot of ammo for that argument, the corollary to which is anyone not on “Deni’s timeline” needs to get out of the way.
On the other hand, Blazers icon Damian Lillard is looming on the near horizon like a ghost of Christmas past. It’s pretty hard to envision a better example of a player “not on Deni’s timeline” than Dame, who is obviously much closer to the end of his career than the beginning. But he apparently has the right to refuse a trade, so he’s going nowhere. Which raises an obvious question: what the heck is Dame doing here?
For starters, let’s kick the conventional wisdom to the curb. The idea that Dame is here as a sentimental gesture to his Trail Blazers legacy is ludicrous, even if that’s what Joe Cronin had in mind when he made this move (reader alert: I have no insider information whatsoever). But let’s get real for a moment: “I’m toast, so just put me in the corner for old time’s sake and I’ll try to make a three now and then” are words that will never be spoken by the Damian Lillard we know and love. Instead, he’s going to roll into training camp next fall with his hair on fire and a chip a mile high on his shoulder.
How do I know this? The same way we all do! Every time someone says Dame will never be close to the same player he was before his Achilles injury, his internal fire burns several degrees hotter. No one knows how much he will actually be able to do when he hits the hardwood again, but everyone knows he’ll try to move heaven and earth to prove every naysayer wrong.
This point is important to remember because it makes the option of going all-in on “Deni’s Team” virtually impossible right now. Dame will be here fighting to reclaim his perch near the top of the NBA totem pole, which means the chances that the team he is on will be thought of as “Deni’s Team” are about the same as Dame’s uniform number: 0. Oh, wait, that was the letter O. How soon we forget!
Fortunately, there is another path forward. What if we turn this situation upside down and ask if Deni and the young core already forming around him fit Dame’s timeline? Judging by what the youngsters are doing on their own right now, I’d say the answer is yes, as long as we keep the other old-timers. Not so sure? Consider for a minute what “Deni’s Team” seems to lack: an experienced point guard, reliable shooting from distance and high-impact bench play. If you add Dame, Jrue Holiday and Jerami Grant to the equation, which of the problems listed above are still looking for a solution?
This obviously requires the return of good health to several people, Dame in particular, which may or may not be possible. But this is the tricky part: it says here that Dame’s journey will dominate the next Trail Blazers season no matter where the journey ends. Why? It’s almost too simple to say: Dame is going to consume most of the oxygen in these parts just like he has since Day One, because no one who has been following the Damian Lillard story this far is likely to skip the final chapter!
So what say you, Blazers faithful! Can we let “Dame’s Team” cook for a season before we ship the old folks off? Drop your answer in the comments.
