It has been 47 years since the Portland Trail Blazers The Blazers have won the only NBA title in franchise history. It’s been 24 years since they’ve been in the running for the title. When the distance between teams in the game starts to stretch into decades, fans can get a little nervous. That’s the topic of today’s Blazers Edge mailbag.
Dave,
I’m in my 30s and have been a fan of this franchise for a few years now, after the last time we reached the conference finals (Y2K). This team can at least consider themselves one of the teams to beat, if not THE team. In fact, in the last century, they could consider themselves one of the teams to beat every few years without having to worry about the strength of their schedule. However, in the time I’ve been a fan, that hasn’t happened. They always promise a future where they’ll be one of the teams to beat in the league, with or without a championship, but that’s been going on for almost exactly two decades now. I know we have at least three potential Rookie of the Year players on the team (Scoot and Sharpe didn’t win, but Clingan still could), but I can’t shake the feeling that this is just a bright future somewhere other than Portland. I know it won’t be the case this year, but is it too much to ask for a single true contender in Portland this century? I mean, all I want to do is make sure that this rebuild actually takes this team to the top level in the long run and that our growth isn’t stunted.
M
I made the rare decision not to edit your question because I liked the passion behind it. I feel you. I think many Blazers fans do.
Let’s discuss your premise just A little before we begin. Of Portland’s recent recruits, only Scott Henderson was expected to be in the running for Rookie of the Year, and even he was predicted to be second to Victor Wembanyama. Shaedon Sharpe was a wild card, a true outsider selected based on his athleticism and potential. No one predicted him to be a ROY, except in the “roll a d20 and see if you get a critical hit” sense.
Donovan Clingan is impressive in Summer League, but I don’t know if he’s going to get any attention for this award. If he does, it’ll be because this rookie class is a mix of similarly talented players, not because of his prowess. Donovan Clingan or Brandon Roy. Which rookie would you add to this team? 101 out of 100 people would choose Roy over Clingan, or any of his classmates for that matter. That puts this year’s crop in perspective.
If the Blazers go 0-3 in Rookie of the Year and don’t become a title contender because of this trio, that doesn’t mean they’ve fallen victim to some sort of Portland curse, like they could have flourished in Detroit. It just means they weren’t that good. Of the three, only Henderson’s failure would raise eyebrows. The other two were decent, but speculative, changes. Not being drafted in Scoot’s draft would be a game of criticism, but this is one draft, not three.
So is it too much to ask for only one Portland contender per century? Maybe. But they’ve had 2.5 contenders in the last century, which is beyond your metric, and we still have 76 years to win it. Your wish could come true before you’re 100.
I don’t think we realize how hard it is to build a championship-caliber team. Making the playoffs is easy. Over the last 20 years, reaching the conference finals has also been an achievable feat for tons of teams, so much so that you probably don’t remember every franchise that’s done it. (Hint: It’s almost everyone.) But one authentic pretender, a NBA Finals Participant or World Champion? It’s rare and difficult.
Take a look at the great teams in Portland history. I can’t really speak to the 1977 championship team. I don’t know much about the league environment at the time, just that Portland won it against Dr. J and company, beating Kareem Abdul-Jabbar along the way. Not too shabby.
I know more about Drexler’s teams and Rasheed Wallace’s All-Star group. Both are arguably ahead of their time. Clyde’s Blazers were a precursor to Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls, not in their style of play, but in their makeup: highly athletic, led by a dominant and prolific wing, and with a balanced roster. They could also be compared to Isaiah Thomas’ Pistons, who beat them in the 1990 NBA Finals. Wallace’s teams were a slightly more name-laden version of another Pistons team that would win it all in 2004.
These correlations are not watertight, but they are valid. Portland had something which was both unique (or rather unique) and different. Their basic structure was good, their talent undeniable. This combination allowed them to compete.
But when has that happened since? The Blazers drafted well in the 2000s and early 2010s. They traded enough to keep their rosters credible. But they never found a good enough position relative to the rest of the league to develop an advantage.
Their best chance, the one that still hurts today, was the formidable trio of Brandon Roy, LaMarcus Aldridge and Greg Oden. Portland acquired these three players in back-to-back drafts. With so much talent, skill and size, they were in position to create an era of their own with a combination that no one else in the NBA could match. Injuries to Roy and Oden destroyed that plan.
Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum were good picks in 2012 and 2013, but that team was structured similarly to the Golden State Warriorswho were already on the rise when Portland’s young back line started to improve. The Blazers weren’t ahead of the curve, just behind. They did fine until they ran into the Warriors in the playoffs, which happened seemingly every season. Then the originals took out the copycats. Take away the Warriors, put the Blazers as the prime example of this type of lineup, and the story might have been different.
The Blazers will now rebuild, hoping to find that magic combination of talent, style of play and window of play that will allow them to break through. There is no evidence that they have any of those elements at the moment. They will not succeed at the highest level without them.
Note that one of those factors, the time window, depends on how teams progress through the league. That’s out of Portland’s control. Wallace’s suitors, whom you loved, met Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant in an era when superstars ruled everything, including the league’s own favorable draft calls. Carry Shaq to 2024 and he’ll have a much harder time dominating than he did in his own years, because the style of play and athleticism have changed so much. Portland couldn’t control the Lakers“They can’t control the dominance of the early 2000s, any more than they can control the rules and numbers in their environment today.
That makes the competition hard to predict. Neither you nor I can say the Blazers will do it. Even if they develop a good mix, finding the right timing and the right list of opponents is important. But it also means we can’t say they won’t either. Maybe they are a Cooper Flagg and it will take them a few more years to take their next flight? Hang on to that as you watch them grow and we will see what happens.
Thanks for the question! You can all send yours to [email protected] and we will try to answer as many questions as possible!
