The Trail Blazers are Not Tanking

The weirdest 24 hours of the Trail Blazers' season were bookended by two Damian Lillard social-media posts.

Last night, after the team's plane had spent hours on the runway at Portland International Airport attempting to weather the snowstorm to fly to Sacramento, Lillard posted an impromptu rap video shot with his teammates by the team's videographer, Tristan Brillanceau-Lewis.

One night later, after the Blazers finally made it to Sacramento hours before tipoff and proceeded to lose by 17 to the Kings with Lillard and Jerami Grant resting and fellow starters Anfernee Simons and Jusuf Nurkic out with injuries, he posted this tweet in response to a local talk-radio personality:

In retrospect, it wasn't hard to see the discourse coming. Two weeks after a deadline that saw the Blazers trade a starter (Josh Hart) and another rotation player (Gary Payton II) for draft picks and three relatively unproven young players, they came off the All-Star break resting their two best players in a road game against a good Kings team. They're 12th in the Western Conference, with Simons out indefinitely and Nurkic out at least for right now. It's not a stretch to see why people think the final two dozen games of the season could turn into a repeat of the second half of last season, when Elijah Hughes and Keljin Blevins started multiple games and the team's obvious goal was to secure the highest pick possible in the draft lottery.

But that's not what the Blazers are going to do the rest of this season. Not on purpose, anyway.

It's entirely possible they miss the playoffs. If the season ended today, they wouldn't even qualify for the play-in. Even though they're only three games back of the sixth-place Mavericks, making the playoffs outright and avoiding the play-in feels like a pipe dream. If they're one of the four teams in the play-in, there aren't too many players you'd take over this year's version of Lillard in one or two single-elimination games. But it's also very possible they make the play-in and lose, and ultimately wind up in the lottery. As has been the story all season, this team can beat anybody and they can lose to anybody.

What the tanking discourse misses is that Lillard isn't wired for that. What the Blazers did last year was made possible, and justifiable, by two things. One was the person who built last season's roster getting fired two months into the season for code-of-conduct violations and his successor being much less attached to certain players who probably should have been traded several years earlier, creating an opportunity to start clearing the books. The other, and much bigger factor, was that Lillard badly needed the core muscle surgery he underwent last January. If there's still any doubt about that, look at the way he struggled at the beginning of last season and compare it to the career-best level he's operating at right now.

If Lillard had been healthy last year, even with the other organizational changes, I don't think the Blazers would have tanked quite as blatantly as they did during a breathtaking 2-19 finish to the season. The perfect storm of organizational upheaval and Lillard's surgery created the opportunity for then-interim general manager Joe Cronin to execute a one-year reset.

This season, the organization has been more cautious with Lillard and other key players than they were previously. He missed time earlier in the season with a mild calf strain, and in at least one instance, I know for a fact that the medical staff had to instruct the equipment managers not to put his jersey in his locker so he wouldn't get it in his head that he could try to play. In December, when it was clear he was going to break Clyde Drexler's franchise scoring record on the road, I joked at a postgame media availability that he could "load manage" the calf to make sure he set the record at home, and he wasn't having it.

You want to try to convince Lillard to shut it down when he's not only not actually hurt but having arguably the best season of his career? Have fun having that conversation with him. Unless Simons' and Nurkic's injuries are season-ending, which no one around the team thinks they are based on what I've heard, and unless Lillard gets hurt, they're going to stay somewhere around where they are right now, in or just out of the play-in mix.

Even if they decided today to start Ryan Arcidiacono, Keon Johnson, Kevin Knox, Jabari Walker and John Butler Jr. and play them 48 minutes a game in an attempt to go 0-23 over the final 23 games, they wouldn't lose enough games to catch Houston, San Antonio, Detroit and Charlotte. Last year's epic second-half tank job, one of the most brazen in league history, only resulted in the sixth-best lottery odds and ultimately the seventh overall pick once the envelopes were drawn. If they miss the playoffs, it'll be because they miss the playoffs, not because they're actively trying to lose games.

And barring a miracle scenario where their 12th or 13th lottery position somehow lands them the No. 1 pick and Victor Wembanyama, they won't be drafting for themselves, anyway. Cronin has telegraphed for at least eight months, and especially since the trade deadline, that the ultimate plan is to trade a collection of future picks and young players for a true game-changer to put next to Lillard for the tail end of his prime. Having the 13th pick in the draft versus conveying that pick to the Bulls if they're in the playoffs and "only" having the Knicks' mid-first-round pick to play with isn't going to materially affect their ability to trade future assets for any players that Lillard may or may not have been photographed talking to at the All-Star Game in Salt Lake City.

The tanking discussion was going to start sooner or later. Holding Lillard and Grant out of a game that almost didn't happen due to travel issues looks a certain way given the realities of where their season is. But there's no reason to believe both won't be in the lineup Sunday against the Rockets, a team that's actually tanking. The Blazers may not ultimately make the playoffs, but it won't be for lack of trying.