The Portland Trail Blazers currently find themselves in an unenviable position in the midst of their NBA Playoffs series with the San Antonio Spurs. Down 3-1 in the best-of-seven, first-round affair, they face an elimination game tomorrow on the road against a hostile crowd, a confident opponent, and generational talent Victor Wembanyama.
The turn for the worse in the playoffs has set the Blazer’s Edge Mailbag alight. We’ll get to more technical questions as the week—and perhaps the offseason—progresses,
but let’s start with a general one that has been repeated in various ways over several inquires.
Dave,
Cheer me up about this because I don’t see a worse possible outcome right now. We gave up a lottery pick in a packed draft just to lose in the first round. How do you possibly justify this?
Ron
Lots of people are saying that right now, Ron. It’s a natural consequence of making the playoffs as a low-end participant, facing a reasonably-tough opponent in the first round. Chances are the seven-seed is going to lose to the second. Hope springs eternal before games are played, but once reality hits, things like opportunity cost and buyer’s remorse set in.
I’m not going to argue that losing would be a great outcome. Winning would definitely be better! But the “How-Bad-o-Meter” could definitely use some adjustment around Blazers Nation right now. It’ll help if we spend a minute separating out factual details from emotion. That’s not to disparage either! Both are a legitimate part of fandom. Both belong. But sometimes things that feel bad aren’t objectively as awful as they seem.
You’ve already laid out the basic facts of the case. Making the playoffs cost Portland a draft pick. It’s not just positioning. They will send their first-rounder this year to the Chicago Bulls to complete a long-past trade for Larry Nance, Jr. The pick could have conveyed anytime over the last few seasons but it was lottery-protected. Since this is the first year the Blazers have been out of the lottery since the deal was made, Chicago gets that pick. And it just so happens that this year’s draft is deep.
The Blazers probably won’t advance out of the first round of the playoffs either. They’re not going to get the chance to go against a wounded Minnesota Timberwolves squad or a defense-free Denver Nuggets troupe. It’s not inconceivable that, had the Blazers held on in each of the last two games, they could be anticipating a wholly-unforeseen trip to the Western Conference Finals. That would have been great experience for them and a huge boost to fans. The distance between that dream and current reality is vast. That hurts.
Let’s step back and look with a critical eye for a second, though. The hurt of missed expectations starts to cloud the actual loss here.
Let’s say the Blazers had missed the playoffs. Yes, they would have kept their draft pick. It probably would have fallen 12th in the lottery order, giving them a 7.1% to advance to the Top 4 in the draft, a 1.5% chance at the first-overall pick. 93 times out of 100, they would not have been promoted. If the Oklahoma City Thunder—the current owner of that spot—get a Top 4 pick, Blazers fans can start swearing. Other than that, Portland lost out on a mid-round selection.
It’ll always be possible, retroactively, to go back and envision Portland taking the best-possible player with that pick. By that criterion, every team in the league would have Nikola Jokic. In real life, we don’t know who they would have selected. Chances are, a mid-round pick wouldn’t change the Blazers’ fortunes. It’d be better to have that pick than not, but the loss isn’t likely to be extreme. The drafts between 2008-2010 will probably be more valuable. The Blazers still have all those picks—their own and swaps/trades with the Milwaukee Bucks—as of this writing.
Moving on to the playoffs loss, it sucks. Losing in the postseason always hurts. It takes away the chance to advance. It ends the season. It also happens over a drawn-out series in a concentrated manner against one team, which is like grinding your face in mud. Nothing is going to make that better until it’s over and everybody goes back to pretending the Blazers are one or two moves away from having changed the outcome.
But keep in mind there’s extra sauce on the Hurtburger right now. The Blazers were ahead significantly in Games 3 and 4. The problem isn’t that Portland lost, it’s that they made you hope, then lost. But that same hope is a sign that they played well, at least for a while. I don’t see many people fooling themselves about this team being great, but it’s generally better to show some positive signs—that crushing defense, some good rebounding, Scoot Henderson stepping up—than to show none. Ironically, the same things that made you feel good in those first halves make you feel bad now. That makes the situation seem worse than it is.
I’d argue that it’d be worse for the team to have come out and played like trash completely rather than making those rallies. We’d all be more sanguine about the series outcome that way, but flatlining would not be a good sign. All things considered, I’ll take the pain to see the potential.
Remember also, this was Portland’s goal all season long. They wanted to make the Play-In Tournament. They wanted to reach the postseason. They got there. We can argue about whether that was smart or not, but the point is moot. The people in charge of the team set this as their aim and they achieved it. There’s at least something to be said for having done that. They deserve internal credit for making the progress they wanted to make, even if we can’t give them full praise for being excellent in abstract terms.
For all those reasons, the likely-losing outcome of this first-round series won’t be quite as bad in reality as it feels as the Blazers and their fans are going through it. Ultimately you have to set aside the expectations, put to rest the broken halftime dreams, and get back to the grind. Absent some kind of miraculous lottery intervention in later years, that’s the only way the Blazers are going to move forward. Whatever the pace, their fans have to move with them, so we might as well start asking, “What’s next?” instead of, “What if?”
Thanks for the question! You can always send yours to blazersub@gmail.com and we’ll try to answer as many as possible!
