A Trail Blazers State of the Union
We all remember where we were when the news hit. Damian Lillard traded to the Bucks, the end of the Dame era. The man who defined the Trail Blazers for the better part of the decade was gone. The winds of change were felt months before when the general management refused to trade their third overall pick and instead drafted 19-year-old phenom Scoot Henderson, but it still left Portland reeling. With the greatest Trail Blazer of all time now chasing a ring in Milwaukee, what will the new era of Blazer culture look like?
We are now 69 games into the season and the modern epoch is now starting to take form. I’m not going to sugarcoat it, the Blazers this year are bad, really bad, history-makingly bad, but it’s okay because we are young. We are allowed to be bad. With an average age of 24.2 (third in the league), the spirit of the Blazers is one of potential. The time to buy Blazers’ stock is now!
If you are considering keeping up the Blazers, let me suggest a few narratives to look out for: Coming into this season, many people put a lot of expectations on our rookie point guard Scoot, and they haven’t really panned out. While I’m not saying 13 points and 5 assists are bad for a 20-year-old rookie, people were looking to him as the Dame replacement, and so when he initially had a slow start people started panicking. Unjustified panic I must say, it’s really difficult for an undersized point guard to adjust to the speed and physicality of the NBA, especially as a teenager. In the minutes he’s played, he’s shown a surprising amount of intelligence as a ball handler and his athleticism allows him to generate plays rarely seen from a rookie. As he starts to mature and become familiar with the way NBA ball is played, he’ll be a killer. Don’t give up on Scoot just yet!
Along with Scoot in the backcourt is our last year's draft selection Shaedon Sharpe. Although currently out with an abdominal strain, when he is healthy, no man in the league can match him when it comes to pure athleticism. In fact, he has the highest vertical jump in NBA history at a staggering 49 inches! A Scoot to Shaedon alley oop is a Blazers’ fan’s wet dream. Besides that, he’s got a decent bag and his catch-and-shoot game is no joke. While known to have dry spells, whenever he gets rolling, god damn is he a force to reckon with.
Now you may be wondering, if we traded Dame away, what did we get in return? The answer is Deandre Ayton. The previous 2018 first-round pick had been having a less-than-fun time in Phoenix, and when he was traded to Portland, he was more than vocal about his excitement to leave dusty old Arizona behind. In the pre-All-Star stretch, DominAyton was having a bit of a rough time, if you spent any time watching Blazer’s ball (an exercise in patience) I’m sure you’d be sick and tired of seeing Ayton wasting position after position-bricking turnaround fadeaways. In the past 10 or games though, he’s been on a bit of a roll, dominating the paint and protecting the rim, averaging a sexy 23 points and 14 (!!) rebounds. In a recent interview, Deandre claims his poor beginning of the season was because he was sleeping on an air mattress, causing him to lose sleep. Come on man, we are literally paying you 33 million dollars a year, buy yourself a bed!
The longest-tenured Blazer is Anfernee Simons, the Robin to Dame’s Batman in the twilight years of his Portland tenure. Probably the man with the strongest claim to being the current poster boy of the team, he’s known for his high-flying dunks and shooting a fuck ton of three. There are games where the poor fellow can’t hit the broad side of a barn, but if you see that man green his first pull-up three, best believe you just bought a one-way ticket to the Anferno.
While this rag-tag group of basketball players can’t seem to buy themselves a win, every once in a while, the stars will align, and things will click. When Deandre Ayton is embodying his inner Olajuwon, Anfernee’s shot is falling, Shaedon transforms into prime Jordan, and Scoot is making those gorgeous passes, it feels like you’re watching a real team! Maybe one day, someplace down the line, we’ll wake up to a team to be reckoned with. So, I suggest to you dear reader, don’t be a bandwagoner, claiming you were a Blazers fan “since day one” when they eventually raise that second banner, hop on this train now, the only place to go is up!