Portland Trail Blazers: The Road To Attrition and Redemption
The Portland Trail Blazers season has mercifully come to an end. Once high hopes led to a painful crash to the bottom. Now it’s time to sift through the wreckage to figure out what’s next in RIP City.
If we’re honest with ourselves, the Portland Trail Blazers 2021-22 season began sliding off the rails, before anyone touched a basketball. First, they “fired” Terry Stotts (he had no desire to return), and their top candidate to replace him declined to interview.
Then they brought in Chauncey Billups, someone with zero head coaching experience. But he did bring a decades-old sexual assault allegation with him. That’s always a feel-good story for a franchise.
In late October, General Manager Neil Olshey was suspended while the team conducted an investigation into his workplace misconduct. A month later, Olshey was gone. The organization replaced Olshey with his assistant, Joe Cronin, on an interim basis. Before going much further, it’s almost four months later, and Cronin still has interim attached to his title.
Players fall out, too
Superstar Damian Lillard only played 29 games, his season-ended on New Year’s Eve. His departure due to surgery for a lingering core muscle injury cut the soul from the Blazers. C.J. McCollum played 35 of 55 games and then was shipped off to New Orleans for Josh Hart and some magic beans. McCollum became expendable with rise of Anfernee Simons.
Jusuf Nurkic, Simons, Justise Winslow, Hart, and Nassir Little all finished the year on the Blazers’ injured list. A team that (foolishly) thought they were contenders at the beginning of the season ended up towards the top of the lottery. This isn’t what anyone in the franchise brain trust had planned. So what happens now?