Trail Blazers big man Zach Collins has suffered another health setback, according to Shams Charania of The Athletic (Twitter link), who reports that Collins re-fractured his foot.
Collins missed the entire 2020/21 season after undergoing a pair of surgeries on his left ankle. He originally injured the ankle and went under the knife during the NBA’s bubble restart last summer, then underwent revision surgery in December to repair a left medial malleolus stress fracture.
Although Charania’s report doesn’t specify which foot Collins injured, his use of “re-fracture” suggests it’s once again that left foot.
It’s a brutal turn of events for Collins, a former 10th overall pick who is eligible for restricted free agency this offseason. Since entering Portland’s starting lineup on a full-time basis at the start of the ’19/20 season, the 23-year-old has only been able to play in 11 games, having missed most of last year due to shoulder surgery.
In 154 career regular season games (17.5 MPG), Collins has averaged 5.7 PPG and 4.0 RPG on .444/.324/.722 shooting.
Portland has always been high on the former Gonzaga standout, having traded the 15th and 20th overall picks in the 2017 draft to move up to No. 10 to get him. However, given his history of injuries, it now seems unlikely that the fourth-year forward/center will even receive a qualifying offer this summer. If he doesn’t get that QO (worth about $7MM), he’ll become an unrestricted free agent.
Sucks to say, but I think he’s done. I liked his potential, as he had a bit of a dog in him, but injuries have ruined his career.
Trading up to get him and missing out on multiple game-changing players drafted right behind him would be enough to get some GMs fired… but Olshey just keeps to keep on screwing up.
Not shocked
He’s done. I guess he gets to go on the Portland big men lost to injury Mount Rushmore alongside Bill Walton, Sam Bowie, and Greg Oden.
LaRue Martin
Martin wasn’t really injured though. He just sucked.
No way, he was no where near their level.
True, but Teddy Roosevelt really wasn’t quite at the level of Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln either. And yet his head is right there with them on the real Rushmore.
So true so true
Big men and Portland don’t mix to well.
Coulda Woulda Shoulda
Bam Adebayo went #14 in that draft
If the kept the #15 and #20
They could have drafted
John Collins and Jarret Allen or OGA
They also chose Caleb Swanigan
over Derrick Brooks in the 2nd rd.
Might want to go take a second glance at the draft results
I took a 2nd and 3rd look.
Same results.
Derrick Brooks?
My bad. Dillon Brooks. Haha
I combined him with Derrick White
Just one of the many players who were picked after Swanigan that panned out. Some others were: Kuzma, Josh Hart, Dwayne Bacon, Monte Morris, Damyean Dotson, etc
But I didn’t hate that pick as much as the Zach Collins pick.
Derrick “deep drop” Brooks, famous Buccaneer linebacker.
The”passed over” analysis of GMs is weak, but Olshey did go after Collins so it’s also a “go after” fail.
I like the Portland injured-big Rushmore list. The Haweses are jealous.
Even if they did draft the more successful players, doesn’t mean they would have been as successful in Portland. These are real human being, not just stat lines. There would have been many different variables for them on the Blazers as opposed to the teams they ended up with. Put Bam on Portland instead of Collins and he may have suffered the same injuries.
I agree that Bam may not have developed as well as he did, if he wasn’t in Miami’s system.
But they still traded up for a reach.
It was a bit of a reach, but him going to Gonzaga and being a local Pacific Northwest product probably had something to do with it also. I guess the thought was to help sell tickets to the newly forming substantial Gonzaga fanbase.
Not trying to be a D-bag but it’s fruitless act replaying past drafts……. if a guy went in the 2nd Rd technically EVERY team passed on him
That’s all on the GM and management team not knowing what to do.
Any team that goes into draft night without a crystal ball is almost certainly not going to get optimal results (as the overwhelming majority of drafted players are going to drafted ahead of multiple guys that go onto have better careers). You can call them “mistakes” if you like, but its meaningless to do so. A mistake in most realms of life means a decision that both yields a bad result and reflects poor reasoning based on information available at the time. Clearly this describes some draft decisions, and, when it does, it’s fair to call it out. But garbling it up with the randomness of bad and good results makes those critiques meaningless as well.
If the Collins’ pick was a “mistake” say why. Was it off consensus? In a way where other teams avoided him because of injury risk? (because that’s the only thing that the pick can be criticized for)
The pick was absolutely a reach at the time. Portland traded up to get Collins, who played one year at Gonzaga and wasn’t a starter. You’re obviously right about the crystal ball, and I don’t think he had any real injury red flags – but there were plenty of pundits with plenty of other concerns about taking such a raw project so high on a team with Dame and win-now aspirations. Not utilizing that draft and subsequent draft picks properly is a big part of the reason Portland is in the exact same spot – mediocre with a superstar wasting his prime – four years later.
I was surprised that he left Gonzaga after one year, but I really don’t believe that, by the time of the draft, he was that much of a reach. Following mock draft was final one for his draft on this site (has him going #11 to the Hornets, with POR taking Luke M immediately prior):
link to nbadraft.net
He was raw, but Collins surprised many NBA watchers/pundits (to the upside) with how quickly he started impacting games. The 2 for 1 trade up was understandable given they had 3 1st round picks, and weren’t going to get Zach Collins at 15.
Would Collins even be a bad result pick if he didn’t get hurt? It certainly wasn’t the best result pick (that would be taking Mitchell or Bam). But a bad result pick if he’s not hurt? No, because very very far from the worst results (starting at #1).
I’m not a fan of Olshey, and like any FO chief he has to OVERALL accept strict liability for the condition of the roster he’s put around his superstar. But I don’t think this pick was his worst moment. Nor was the trade that got him #20, which allowed him to turn his #15 into #10.
Olshey may have liked him for his father as well. Sometimes bigs appear lazy because they they have so much weight to move; but Collins was always going to be kept motivated, reactive, vacuum-filling, twitchy-similar, thus forward-capable in theory.
But bigs mostly get betrayed by their own feet/ankle/shin construction. Humans are designed to be about five feet tall.