Trail Blazers Rebuild: The Clock Is Ticking In Portland
The Portland Trail Blazers are, to put it kindly, struggling. Rookie Scoot Henderson has yet to put together a stretch where he looks like a future NBA All-Star, and their acquisition of Deandre Ayton has yet to live up to the hype.
The Henderson point is, however, much less important. After all, he just turned 20 years old a few days ago, and has to adjust to not only play with goggles, but also to the pace of the NBA game. Frankly, my concern-O-meter on Henderson remains low, and probably will for some time.
That said, the presence of Henderson does raise one question for the upcoming draft. If the Blazers select in a spot where the best player left on the board is unquestionably a point guard, how do they approach it?
Some teams fear that multiple young players at the same position can lead to a lack of focus due to the competitive nature of carving out their careers. Others see it as an advantage in the "the strongest will survive" kind of way.
For the Blazers, their situation would be multi-layered, particularly due to Henderson still trying to find his way. The data the team has on Henderson at the end of the year only reveals information of what has been an up-and-down rookie season, which has questionable use.
Would going BPA (Best Player Available) undermine the confidence of Henderson, if that player proves to be a point guard? And what signal would that send to the league?
It's easy to argue that the Blazers have time for such an experiment, given where they are in their rebuild, but that might not be the case.
The Blazers are riddled with expensive contracts that might not have a place on the roster long-term, and will need to shed them before their crop of young players are up for extensions.
Playing around with a "multiple point guard" experiment might legitimately be too wasteful of their available time. Shaedon Sharpe is just a year and a half away from being extension eligible. Ayton and Jerami Grant occupy not insignificant portions of the cap. And no one seems to fully know whether Anfernee Simons has a role moving forward.
As such, time is precious, and for the Blazers to potentially double down on the point guard selection, it could cost them in both time management, and sacrifice bits and pieces of Henderson's potential.
That's not to say such a plan won't work, particularly if the team finds a high-feel player like Nikola Topić, who is admittedly the inspiration of this piece. It shouldn't come as much of a surprise if the Blazers find themselves in the position of having a pick high enough to where Topić makes the most sense, which of course raises some questions.
As mentioned, going the route of two point guards is fine, in theory, but the Blazers won't have many cracks at getting the formula right, especially due to the lack of diverse skills on the roster.
Portland needs wings, they need switchable big men, and they need more outright talent at multiple positions. There isn't much time to find all of that before you need to pay for tomorrow's core, and there will be even less time to round out the roster if you come away from multiple drafts with players occupying the same spot on the floor.
Naturally, you can always trade down in the draft, or even out of it if the situation calls for it, but then you run the risk - especially in a draft projected to be weak - of selecting a player who won't make much of a difference. And whatever future assets you get out of the deal will come against the backdrop of a ticking clock.
As such, the Blazers need to have some potentially unpleasant conversations before the draft, about timeline, about talent optimization, about development strategies, and about their cap sheet. Because their rebuild timeline didn't start with Henderson, it started with Sharpe in 2022. And whole four-year rookie contracts might feel like forever, most teams will tell you it's not.
Unless noted otherwise, all stats via NBA.com, PBPStats, Cleaning the Glass or Basketball-Reference. All salary information via Spotrac. All odds courtesy of FanDuel Sportsbook.
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