MAILBAG: Trade Odds, Who Will Surprise in Camp
Plus, a Shaedon Sharpe health update, and just how long are the Blazers going to be rebuilding?
Something about the final week of the offseason always seems to bring about absolutely seismic Trail Blazers news.
One year ago this week, the now-retired Adrian Wojnarowski delivered the biggest basketball-related news the franchise had seen at least a decade:
A year later, on Monday night, news came down that, it can be argued, has just as big of long-term implications for the organization on the business side: all of their games going forward will be available to watch for free on over-the-air network TV and through a streaming package.
Why did the team announce news this massive at 8:30 p.m. on a Monday, rather than lead with it in the morning? The answer to that is actually pretty simple: KATU is Portland’s ABC affiliate, and coming out of Monday Night Football, a larger-than-usual percentage of sports fans’ TVs in the Portland area would already be tuned to the channel, allowing them to make a big splash by announcing it live on the local news.
The jury is out on the Lillard trade. I still believe it’s the best deal Joe Cronin could have gotten last summer given the circumstances, but it will be several years before all of the picks convey and we know where it all lands.
But this TV news? That’s an immediate win, across the board. The Blazers are going from a ROOT Sports partnership everyone hated, which severely limited who could watch their games and forced those who did get the channel to deal with subpar picture and sound quality, to a station anyone with a TV antenna can get for free. The BlazerVision streaming package is very reasonably priced, too. $120 for the season comes out to a little under $1.50 per game, not even factoring in that it also comes with a pair of tickets to a home game.
Whenever I’ve been asked about the team’s future TV plans, which came up in a couple of earlier offseason mailbags, I’ve had to give a cryptic non-answer to the effect of, “They’re still figuring out the details but I think people are going to like it.” Now you see what I mean. After the disaster that was last season from a TV standpoint, when Comcast’s last-minute ROOT Sports price hike caused a nearly 50 percent drop in the team’s local TV ratings, I had a pretty good idea that the organization was going to do everything in their power to make sure that didn’t happen again going forward.
But just like with the prolonged Lillard trade talks last offseason, it took all summer for the Blazers to hammer out the details and get it right. They were one of the worst teams in the NBA last year and they’re going to be one of the worst teams in the NBA again this year. Last year, they were bad and logistically a pain to find on TV. You can’t be both. And going forward, they won’t be. It’s hard to find a downside with the way this worked out.
Blazers fans aren’t used to pure, unqualified good news, especially lately. You should be celebrating this week.
(And, selfishly, more people being able to watch the team easily and for free means more people who could be interested in reading about the team, which you can do right here all season.)
On that note, with less than a week to go before Monday’s media day and the official kickoff of training camp, here’s the first of two parts of the final offseason mailbag, which covers the latest on the trade front, a Shaedon Sharpe health update and who might surprise in camp.
If you had to predict, who do think will surprise us this year in terms of jump or impact? I know a lot of us weren’t anticipating Toumani having the success early he had so just curious if you think more might click for Scoot in year 2 or maybe someone else.
- Shane L.
Scoot is certainly the most interesting player to keep an eye on in training camp, and we’ll get to what his expectations for the season are a lot more in the second part of the mailbag.
The answer to this question I don’t think is a newcomer, like the Toumani Camara example you mentioned—a late second-round pick who was an ancillary piece in the Lillard trade and unexpectedly started the majority of the season. The Blazers only have two new players this year, Deni Avdija and Donovan Clingan, and I think it’s pretty clear what they are as players and what their roles are going to be.
I think people are going to be reintroduced to Shaedon Sharpe in a major way during camp. He only played 32 games last season because of the core surgery and showed signs of taking a real leap before them.
Speaking of…
Any updates on Shaedon Sharpe’s injury? Will he be fully ready for camp”
- Ben D.
Sharpe has been healthy all summer. He participated in training camp with Team Canada before the Olympics and played in a pro-am in Vancouver last month. He’s good to go.
What are the odds we see a trade before the start of the season?
- Kyle H.
Not very high. The Lillard trade at the end of September last year was an exceptional circumstance, and trades don’t often happen that close to camp. Right now, the trade market is what it is, and the Blazers haven’t seen any offers this summer they’ve felt compelled to jump on.
The roster as it stands right now, five days before the start of camp, is going to be the roster on opening night. Where that changes is a few months into the season, when teams either have injuries or realize what they have isn’t working, and that’s when the trade market picks up. The only deal the Blazers needed to make this summer was moving Malcolm Brogdon and they took care of that on draft night. Nothing else has made sense for them, to this point.
Of Anfernee Simons, Jerami Grant, and Robert Williams III, who do you think is going to be the first to be traded and when?
- PTownJake
Tough to say without knowing how the first half of the season plays out. Williams would theoretically be the easiest to move, because he makes the least money, making salary matching simpler, and there are already teams (like the Knicks, who just learned they won’t have Mitchell Robinson for the first part of the season) who could use a backup center. But Williams only played six games last season and has had major injuries to both knees now, so teams undoubtedly want to see him be able to stay on the floor for the first half of the season before offering value to trade for him. The Blazers want to see him play, too, both because when healthy he can help them, and because staying healthy will increase his eventual trade value.
I thought it would have been smart to try to move Simons this summer, and I still think the likely long-term outcome is that he’s somewhere else before the end of his contract in two years. But do they want to make that decision now, before seeing what Henderson looks like in his second year?
Grant there will continue to be a market for as the deadline gets closer. We already know the Lakers have kicked the tires on him at different points this summer.
But I don’t think anything is going to happen with any of these guys until closer to the deadline.
I get the whole team strategy of rebuilding by losing a lot of games to gain better draft position, calculated trades of your remaining veterans, and playing the young guys, but I wonder if the Blazers will try to sell that strategy again next summer if they don’t get one of the top 2-3 prospects in next year’s draft?
Everyone loves the idea of having the next big superstar on their team, but is perpetually waiting for that unicorn really better than having a team that is competitive even if they don’t have a chance to win a championship?
I just hope the strategy isn’t to drag this on until you land the next LeBron, or else this could get real ugly.
- Kacy H.
I don’t love it, either. And intentionally or not, that’s been what the Blazers ended up selling for four years in a row. Going into last season, on the heels of the Lillard trade, that was their plan the whole time. The two seasons before that, they pivoted into it partway through due to injuries. This year, with Cooper Flagg and a couple of other nearly-as-heralded prospects in the 2025 draft, that’s the intention again, and I think most people are OK with that.
But if they fall back in the lottery again, I agree with you that it’s going to be tough to sell people on a fifth straight year of just hoping next year is the year the ping-pong balls go their way. They’ll need to change their approach somewhat. Mathematically, and with the new CBA’s restrictions and the high value of draft picks, tanking until you get a star in the draft is the “correct” model, but doing this year after year is how you become the Orlando Magic in the years between trading Dwight Howard and getting the current Paolo Banchero/Franz Wagner nucleus they have. That was almost a decade of complete irrelevance. Nobody wants that.
Understand why not but would've loved to hear some feedback on the David Thorpe/Scoot stuff. Realistically the hope for the franchise right now is a bunch of improvement out of Scoot/Sharpe, the two guys that we have that could conceivably be allstar level players. Super worrying to hear a report saying Scoot was the most disappointing player in summer runs and hasn't shown any improvement finishing at the rim. Hope he's wrong!
But have we been much better then the magic since Dwight Howard? Sure record wise better but nothing else to show for it. If we aren't trying to win championships what are we doing? We spent the majority of Lillards career in mediocre. I rather take the beatings for 5 years to hopefully get a decade of contention.