Joe Cronin Lays Out His Vision as Blazers Introduce Draft Picks

TUALATIN, Ore.—"Talent and mentality."

Those two words are the underpinning of Joe Cronin's plan for reinventing the Trail Blazers this summer. They're two things the team needs a lot more of, by the GM's own admission, and they're two things he feels their newest rookies, who were introduced to local media on Saturday.

The gathering was a pretty standard-issue press conference to introduce a set of draft picks. Both Shaedon Sharpe (No. 7 overall) and Jabari Walker (No. 57 overall) are excited to be in Portland, feel like it's a perfect fit and just want to help the team in any way they can. Cronin wasn't sure Sharpe, their top target from the beginning, would still be on the board when it was the Blazers' turn to pick.

All throughout the league, you're hearing the same stuff at 28 teams' introductory press conferences, plus the statement the Knicks put out on Twitter in lieu of their front office ever talking. You're not going to get any grand insights into either of these guys at these things—I'm hoping to get to know the two rookies on a more personal level at Summer League in Las Vegas, which starts in a couple weeks.

The part that was interesting was Cronin and Chauncey Billups laying out, once again, their vision for the summer and the new identity of the team.

"Our emphasis this offseason is going to be consistent across all our different vehicles—the draft, trade, free-agency vehicles," Cronin said. "The right mentality, the right demeanor, the competitive nature, the toughness, the grit. That defensive-minded approach. You're going to see that consistently across our acquisitions."

That's been what Billups has preached since the start of last training camp, and it's been reflected in the players Cronin brought in with his deadline deals, most notably with Justise Winslow and Josh Hart. It's why Jerami Grant was a perfect fit, and why it makes sense that OG Anunoby was the focus of much of the Blazers' draft-week trade activity.

If they're going to build around Damian Lillard with Anfernee Simons in the CJ McCollum role, they'll have the "scoring guards who are defensive liabilities" quota taken care of. It's why the Zach LaVine rumors never made sense and always felt more like GMs spitballing with reporters about which teams might be able to make the cap space (which, by the way, Portland will no longer have the ability to do after using a trade exception in the Grant deal).

No, the priorities going into next week's start of free agency will be bigger guards and wings who can defend multiple positions. Keep an eye on Matisse Thybulle, a fellow client of Lillard's agency, Goodwin Sports, as a potential target. (Although Lillard and Jusuf Nurkic have bigger ideas, judging from their Saturday afternoon posting activities. It's hard to disagree with Nurkic's view that one of the two or three best players in the world would be the missing piece to this team.)

Whatever the roster looks like this fall, don't expect Sharpe or Walker to play much right away. It's not unheard of for rookies to crack a playoff team's rotation (just this year, Scottie Barnes in Toronto, Herb Jones in New Orleans and Ziaire Williams in Memphis made real impacts), but you can't count on it. I asked Sharpe if he was prepared to not play much right away on a team hoping to make the playoffs after sitting out his entire freshman season at Kentucky, and he said he was.

"Most of the guys that were drafted in Shaedon's range are going to teams that will probably be there again next year, by way of rebuilding," Billups added. "That's not what we're doing here, obviously."