2022-23 NBA Season: Portland Trail Blazers Offseason Recap And Season Preview
Reaching the NBA playoffs for eight consecutive years from 2014-2021, the Portland Trail Blazers had been a competitive team in the Western Conference for quite some time, but they truly never were a championship-caliber threat.
After splitting with long-time head coach Terry Stotts, the Trail Blazers hired former five-time All-Star Chauncey Billups as their new head coach ahead of the 2021-22 season.
Everything that could have gone wrong for the Blazers went wrong this past year, as Joe Cronin took over as the team’s general manager after Neil Olshey was fired in December due to allegations of workplace misconduct and then All-Star Damian Lillard only ended up playing in 29 games due to undergoing abdominal surgery in January.
Portland finished the 2021-22 season 27-55, their worst record in nearly two decades, and now they face an uphill climb in what is once again a competitive Western Conference.
Rumors surrounding Damian Lillard’s future in Portland have been going on for quite some time now and while many are still keen on the idea of him leaving the Trail Blazers, it does not appear as if Lillard is going anywhere anytime soon.
Not only is he under contract through the 2024-25 season with no opt out clauses, but Lillard recently put pen to paper on a massive two-year, $121 million contract extension that keeps him in a Portland Trail Blazers uniform through the 2026-27 season, that is if he is to opt into his $63.2 million option for that final season.
“I don’t think that you earn something like this just by going out there and scoring a bunch of points,” Lillad said in the team’s press release. “Something that’s missing in our league is character, and the fight and the passion and pride about, you know, not just the name on the back, but the name on the front, and how you impact the people that you come in contact with.”
Lillard is “all-in” with the Trail Blazers right now and the team’s front-office has made the necessary moves to help Lillard find success on the floor.
The Portland Trail Blazers have a new look to them heading into the new year and their recent moves this offseason could set them up to get back to the playoffs during the 2022-23 season.
NBA Draft: Shaedon Sharpe (7), Jabari Walker (57)
While they would have liked to land a pick inside the Top-4 of the 2022 NBA Draft, the Portland Trail Blazers had to settle with the No. 7 pick, a pick that had a lot of traction in some trade talks the night of the draft.
Ultimately holding onto this lottery pick, the Blazers selected Shaedon Sharpe, who enrolled at the University of Kentucky, but never played in a single game.
One of the biggest question marks of the draft, Sharpe is still only 19-years-old and has a lot to prove in order to earn time on the floor during his rookie season. Portland was hopeful that they would be able to work with their rookie in Summer League and start to mold him into the kind of player they want him to be, but then Sharpe only ended up playing about five minutes in Las Vegas due to a small labral tear in his left shoulder.
The good news for Portland is that their seventh overall pick did not undergo surgery and could be ready to resume activities around training camp.
Entering the season as a major unknown, Shaedon Sharpe may very well take a “redshirt year” in the NBA, using his rookie season to work on his craft in the G League while still practicing with the team from time-to-time. Expect to see both Damian Lillard and Anfernee Simons work with the rookie from Day 1.
As for their second-round pick, Jabari Walker has turned out to be a solid looking rotational player for the Trail Blazers. In Summer League, Walker averaged 12.4 points, 9.0 rebounds, 1.0 steals and 1.0 blocks in five games, helping the Blazers claim the Summer League Championship.
Signing an actual rookie deal with the team and not a two-way contract like many expected, Walker will likely see some playing time off-the-bench during his rookie season because of his defensive tenacity and toughness.
Overall though, both of Portland’s rookies will likely spend a vast majority of their rookie seasons fine tuning their craft and working on their game as a whole, not seeing a whole lot of playing time compared to other rookies around the league.
Free Agency/Trades:
Re-Signed: G Anfernee Simons (4yr/100M), C Jusuf Nurkić (4yr/70M), C Drew Eubanks (1yr/1.9M)
Additions: F Jerami Grant, G Gary Payton II
Departures: G Eric Bledsoe
The most important aspect of the offseason for the Trail Blazers this offseason was retaining both Anfernee Simons and Jusuf Nurkic simply because they did not have any options to replace either of the two.
Investing $170 million in total between these two players, both Simons and Nurkic return to Portland on new four-year deals, helping to solidify this team’s core moving forward next to Damian Lillard.
In his first big move as general manager of the Trail Blazers, Joe Cronin went out and got Lillard some more help, trading some draft picks to the Detroit Pistons in exchange for versatile forward Jerami Grant.
Spending the last two years in Detroit, Jerami Grant has really broken out in a big way and has proven to be a key No. 2 or No. 3 scoring option for a contending-like team. In 101 total games with the Pistons, Grant averaged 20.9 points and shot 42.8% from the floor, giving Lillard a firm No. 2 option alongside Simons.
Perhaps one of the more underrated signings of the offseason came by way of the Blazers inking Gary Payton II, who is coming off a title run with the Golden State Warriors, to a three-year, $28 million deal. Maybe Portland overpaid Payton, but he has proven to be an elite-level defensive player, exactly what the Trail Blazers have been missing through the years.
After all, they ranked last in the league this past season in defensive rating, so finding ways to improve on that end of the floor are vital. Jerami Grant is a really solid defender in his own right, third-year forward Nassir Little should provide some much needed defensive depth on the wing since he is returning from injury and now Gary Payton II can be their primary defensive stopper given his strength and athleticism to defend virtually 1-3 on the court.
Getting better defensively was obviously a point of emphasis for the Trail Blazers in free agency and in trade talks, which is why they made the moves they did.
2022-23 Season Outlook:
The biggest factor for the Trail Blazers heading into the 2022-23 season with be whether or not their secondary talents are good enough to compete in the Western Conference.
We know what to expect from Damian Lillard, Anfernee Simons and Jusuf Nurkic, but the rest of this roster is slightly unproven right now outside of guys like Jerami Grant and Josh Hart.
Justise Winslow has had trouble staying healthy, Nassir Little is coming off of core muscle surgery and both Trendon Watford and Keon Johnson are still young talents looking to earn more playing time for themselves.
We talked about how improving defensively will help this team improve from the dreadful season they are coming off of and the same can be said about Portland’s bench scoring, as they ranked 25th in the league last year in bench points per game.
Lillard, Simons, Hart, Grant and Nurkic could combine for 100 points every single game, but if nobody else is scoring for this team, the Blazers’ core will get run down, they will possibly get injured and this team will have nobody to compete heading towards the end of the season and possibly the playoffs.
While they are certainly going to be better than their 27-55 record from a season ago, it is hard to envision the Portland Trail Blazers being much better than a .500-record or 45-win team during the 2022-23 season.
With how crowded the Western Conference is going to be this upcoming year and teams that did not make the playoffs last season like the Los Angeles Lakers, Los Angeles Clippers and Sacramento Kings all expected to be in the playoff hunt, Portland is going to have their work cut out for them.
The first month of the 2022-23 season will be very telling as to whether or not this team has what it takes to compete with some of the best of the best and possibly make it back to the playoffs.
