After an 11-year partnership between Damian Lillard and the Trail Blazers, the two sides moved on this offseason with a trade that sent one of the franchise’s all-time best players to the Bucks. Now, following years of attempts to compete, Portland looks completely different, with players like Scoot Henderson, Deandre Ayton and Shaedon Sharpe heading up its young core.
While Lillard occupied most of the spotlight, general manager Joe Cronin made plenty of headlines during the time in which Lillard’s request seemed in limbo, The Washington Post’s Ben Golliver writes. Media members and fans alike drew different conclusions regarding Cronin, Golliver details, with some accusing Cronin of not sending Lillard to his then-preferred destination of Miami “out of spite” and others calling him a “liar” for drafting Henderson instead of trading the draft pick for a contender. To add fuel to the fire, Lillard didn’t thank Cronin in his lengthy farewell letter to Portland.
“[Lillard] and I went through it this summer,” Cronin said. “It wasn’t always amicable and perfect. To be omitted from that [letter], I didn’t take as anything more than it being a hard summer that we had both gone through. I wasn’t one to be thanked at that moment. … Our directions didn’t line up. Things didn’t work out. We had pure intentions in our desire to build a winner around him. We were just unable to pull it off. I don’t think that was a lie. We just couldn’t get it done.”
One of the most overlooked aspects of the Lillard trade is how it affected local marketing, Golliver explains. Season ticket holders had to make decisions to renew or not and promoters had to make the decision on which players on the team to highlight. Even before Lillard was traded, the Blazers began to turn the page, Golliver writes, moving to feature Henderson and the young core and removing Lillard entirely from promo material.
“We really need to move on,” Trail Blazers president of business operations Dewayne Hankins said in a Zoom call. “We’ve got great young talent. We’re not like other rebuilding teams who don’t have a strong core of young players. It’s time to turn the page.”
Fans came around to Lillard’s exit, according to Golliver, and season ticket holders renewed at a 93% rate, up six percentage points last year.
“We wanted to honor Dame’s trade request,” Hankins said. “If we promote him, are we being true to our fans? That was the moment when we started saying that this was a new era. It’s really hard to lose a legend like Damian whose number will go in the rafters as soon as possible. At the same time, I think we’re prepared. Our next step is getting our fans to fall in love with these guys.”
Even though Cronin didn’t trade Lillard to the Heat, he believes he did right by the star guard by sending him to a contender, according to Golliver. Hankins said his staff is still mulling the right way to honor the guard, Golliver writes, including the possibility of a statue outside Portland’s arena, Moda Center.
“We’ve retired a lot of numbers,” Hankins said. “We’ve had the conversation: Is there another level of honor that we need to create for him?”
The Blazers still have work to do in completing their rebuild, but they’re as high as possible on Henderson, Anfernee Simons and Sharpe taking the reins left by Lillard at the guard spot, according to Golliver. I highly recommend reading Golliver’s piece in full, as there’s some fascinating perspective and quotes from high-ranking Blazers officials inside.
This is clearly the guy that is leading Portland’s young core… link to m.youtube.com
The only thing Portland has done to move on was fleecing Phoenix to get Ayton. But, at the same time, Portland has a long history of destroying the health of their Centers, Walton, Bowie, Oden, Nurkic. Is Ayton going to be their next victim?
Portland fleecing suns?! Not
Ayton wanted out and he finally caught a break and so did Dame.
The suns also picked up some depth and nurkic is actually better statistically then ayton. Health is the key for all centers which is why so many are over paid.
Portland got a haul player and pick wise. Good for them.
I’ll give you partial credit on Walton (the team asked him to play through injuries which exacerbated them; however, he had plenty of injury problems to begin with), but how did Portland destroy Bowie, Oden, or Nurkic? They seem like they brought their own injuries to Portland.
This whole process showed Lillard cared more about his legacy than what was best for the Blazers franchise. He wanted a pdx title as “Dame-Time” and the team suffered from a lack of teamwork. If he truly wanted a title in PDX he would have embraced the youth and took a step back from Dame-Time and tried to make his young teammates better “maybe team-time” Sadly stats are all he ever played for in Portland. He never made his teammates better, in fact they regressed under his leadership. He was definitely the best shooter ever in PDX but not the best player ever, because Walton, Roy and Drexler made their teammates better and were better all around players by a big margin.
LeMarcus Aldridge was the only other All-Star/All NBA teammate Dame has in his entire tenure in Portland. Aldridge left in Dame’s second season for much the same reason Dame did. Other than that the next best player he played with was McCollum. No disrespect to CJ but he was basically Lillard lite. They should have traded CJ years before they actually did to balance the team.
Every time the Blazers had a good team around him the front office would let the support players leave in order to avoid the luxury tax, yet he carried them to the playoffs in 8 of the 11 seasons he was there including a trip to the WCF. All that and yet Dame stuck it out, then finally after the team showed Dame they were ready to move on then just like Drexler before him Dame asked for a trade. The main difference is that front office and ownership group traded Drexler to the team he wanted to play for.
I’d also just like to point out that Cronin was Director of Player Personnel for the Blazers since 2014, which means he had a personal hand in every bad trade, signing, and draft pick since that time. Some people might try to put all of that on Neil Olshey, who is an easy target because 1) he’s gone now, and 2) he is a giant douchebag in his personal life. But Cronin is far from blameless in the parade of mediocrity the organization trotted out behind Dame, even before he became GM.
Brandon Roy was a great culture changing guy when it was most need in Portland, but he was a ball -movement killer of the highest order. Once the ball went into Roy’s hands, that was it. All you need to do is check his assists per 36 minutes played in comparison to Lillard to see that Roy’s biggest fault was his domination of the ball while Lillard, contrary to the standard dialogue was among Portland’s all time leading assists player, second only to Terry Porter.
B. Roy was a scoring machine and great all around player, Lillard was one dimensional. Just because he dominated the ball his assists were up. He has never been a good passer, even in the pick and roll he had problems distributing it. He was even worse when pressured into passing. Too many years we have watched him make bad passes in traffic out of the pick and roll, when he couldn’t create space to shoot? It seems most are blind to the flaws, when they worship their heroes. Lillard was the most overrated, over hyped, one dimensional player in blazers history. When it comes to his overall game, he was lacking in critical areas essential to team success and chemistry. Like Defense, Passing and trust in his teammates. Funny thing about last year before the season started he even said “it’s about trust” and then he demonstrated he had none in his teammates. As a point guard that may be the worst quality you could have.
Lillard was just like Aldridge, he couldn’t let go of leadership. When it was time to take a back seat in favor of wins via teamwork, he chose Dame-Time over team-time. Last season was a perfect example: they started out winning with ball movement (no hero ball as Billups said), while playing deep into the bench. Then all of the sudden they increased starters minutes and they stagnated. They blamed it on injuries, but it was selfishness or the plan because that’s when the team and the association started shopping Lillard. Lillard knew then it was over here. All the off-season drama was for entertainment. The blazers knew they had a star in Sharpe and Walker was a workhorse. They had Simons to pair with Sharpe so they decided to go athletic instead of hero-ball-hog offense. They let some great young players go like Watford and Eubanks that had us all confused but ended up better with Ayton and Williams. This team will surprise many this year “if the refs/association lets them play” RIP City is back and it’s fast breaking like the original 77 squad of Red Hot & Rollin.
PG. Brogdon SG. Simons SF. Grant PF. R Williams C. Ayton sixth man Henderson, Sharpe and Thybulle(starting if R Williams doesn’t/Grant to PF)
Then find a young SG and C