Goodbye Dame Time, Hello Scoot Season

Okay, so I know this is supposed to be a blog about food and travel. But guess what? I have a lot of thoughts about a variety of issues, and I have a platform (this blog) to share them. In particular, I have a lot of thoughts about this little thing we call the NBA. So buckle up and enjoy my soliloquy.

By now, you know that Damian Lillard has been traded. For some casuals, this may have come as a shock. But for me, who mainlines NBA basketball directly into my veins, this was a long time coming. For years, Lillard has been sensational, but it hasn’t been enough to drag a motley crew of decent-to-abysmal role players to the Finals. And after two seasons that ended with tanking and lottery draft picks instead of an early exit from the playoffs, this was supposed to be the year that the front office finally got Dame some help.

All summer, I spent many hours on FanSpo’s trade machine, scheming up ways the Blazers could finally pair Dame with an All-Star caliber teammate. Some combination of Anfernee Simons, Jusuf Nurkic, and draft picks could perhaps be used to deal for Jaylen Brown, Mikal Bridges, Pascal Siakam, or even Zion Williamson. When the draft lottery rolled around, I watched with bated breath to see if we could land the rights to draft the French phenom Victor Wembanyama – viewed as the best draft prospect since LeBron James – 1st overall. We were tied with a few other teams who were terrible the previous year for the best odds: a 10.5% chance at the best prospect in 20 years. And while the Blazers didn’t have the luck needed to grab the #1 pick (we were just one ping pong ball away), we earned the #3 overall pick. And given the near-certainty that Charlotte, sitting at #2, would take Brandon Miller (the Hornets already have a young point guard as their franchise player in LaMelo Ball), our pick could be used to select Scoot Henderson, a point guard from the NBA’s developmental G-League who plays like a cross between Derrick Rose and Russell Westbrook. So, in short, I thought our package of Simons (a great young shooter and playmaker on a team-friendly contract), Nurkic (yugh), and the rights to Henderson, plus a few more picks or bench players, would be enough to land Dame a partner-in-crime.

Draft night came, and as I watched the Hornets take Brandon Miller, I knew the pressure was on. While some players are traded on draft night after they are selected (Kobe Bryant was drafted by Charlotte before being traded to the Lakers later that night), it is much less likely. I was laser-focused on the television with my heart pounding, waiting for Adrian Wojnarowski to announce the blockbuster deal. But… nothing happened. The Blazers took Scoot. A few minutes later, I watched the Blazers use their other first-round pick on another rookie (acquired from the Knicks at the trade deadline for Josh Hart: another time I thought the Blazers might make a move while the Western Conference was a top-to-bottom deadheat). I couldn’t believe that nothing had happened.

For weeks, I had been waiting for this moment. I knew in my heart of hearts that even with the addition of another superstar, Portland still wasn’t good enough to beat the elite teams of the Western Conference in a 7 game series. But I just wanted them to try. Jesus, I wanted them to try. I thought this was finally the year, after years of first-round exits with Lillard carrying a mediocre roster, that we would do right by him and get him a partner. But we didn’t. We did nothing. About a week later, Dame requested a trade. And honestly, I couldn’t blame him.

In a league where superstars change teams at the drop of a hat (Kevin Durant, James Harden, Kyrie Irving), leaving heartbroken fans in their wake, Damian Lillard remained for an entire decade. I thought Lillard might have a Dirk Nowitzki-esque career: 20 years in one city carrying a mediocre supporting cast to the playoffs year after year, and then finally reaching the promised land. But even when Dirk beat the Heatles for the championship in 2011, he had the help of Jason Kidd (one of the best point guards ever, and still effective even in the twilight of his career) and Tyson Chandler (who would be named Defensive Player of the Year the following season). Damian Lillard has only had one All-Star teammate: LaMarcus Aldridge, who predated Lillard in Portland and then departed for San Antonio in 2015 before Lillard’s prime began. I’ll refrain from going down memory lane too much but suffice it to say that the Blazers’ front office barely lifted a finger to get Dame some help in his decade-long tenure in Portland.

So began the waiting game. Dame specifically requested to be traded to the Miami Heat, a squad coming off a surprise run to the NBA Finals coached by Portland native Erik Spoelstra (Jesuit High School and UP alum). However, there was a dilemma. There is a delicate balancing act that teams trying to trade for a superstar must play. On the one hand, in the free market of the National Basketball Association, superstars are worth quite a lot. So while teams must give up a lot in terms of assets to acquire them, they must retain enough to be a championship contender. Otherwise, what’s the point of making the trade in the first place? What the Heat were offering for Lillard was to put it simply, not very attractive. While reports of what was really on the table vary, the proposed trade package seems to have been centered around Tyler Herro. Now make no mistake, Herro is a good player. But guards like him, who can put up 20 points a game without contributing much more, are fairly common in the league. We basically already have one of those guys in Anfernee Simons, who’s on a better contract. But because Miami wasn’t offering either Jimmy Butler or Bam Adebayo (their two stars), Herro was their next-best player. So the deal was something like Herro, some expiring contracts to make the salaries match, and maybe two first-round picks and two pick swaps. Not a very enticing offer. Maybe since Dame specifically asked to be traded there, Pat Reily and Miami’s front office thought they could lowball Portland with no one else bidding.

So Portland and Miami were at an impasse. And with the slow sports news cycle during the dog days of summer, all we heard on ESPN and social media was how Portland needed to ‘do right by Dame’ and trade him for 30 cents on the dollar ‘because he had been so loyal.’ The sports media apparatus, when not lecturing the Blazers about what they should do, offered some other potential trades that made me queasy. Bill Simmons in particular (I don’t know why I keep listening to his podcast – I guess I respect his knowledge of basketball’s history even if his opinions are often laugh-out-loud absurd) proposed a Dame for Karl-Anthony Towns trade that made me want to reach into my phone and strangle him. During all of this, the NBA Summer League happened, and though Scoot Henderson only played for about 3 quarters before being injured, he looked incredible while he was out there. Watching Scoot play with last year’s lottery pick, Shaedon Sharpe, I felt that regardless of what happened with Dame, the future in Rip City was bright. But the more I waited, the more I speculated. Maybe the Blazers would start the season with Dame still on the roster and trade him at the winter deadline. Would Dame and Scoot play together? I had told anybody who would listen on draft night that Dame and Scoot were incompatible, but maybe I was wrong. Eventually, it was time for me to go to Singapore and sports were pushed to the back of my mind (as much as they could be). Then, the NFL season started and I concerned myself with my fantasy team.

And then all of a sudden, boom. I wake up on my last morning in Saigon and check my phone, only to see a flood of notifications and texts. We finally traded Dame… to a team no one expected. The Milwaukee Bucks? Though the Bucks had a disappointing playoff (bounced in the first round as a #1 seed by the Heat), they had most of the same core from their 2021 championship squad and were expected to run it back with a new coach. In a 3-team deal with Milwaukee and Phoenix, the Blazers gave up Dame, Nurkic, and two bench players for Deandre Ayton, Jrue Holiday, some bench player no one’s ever heard of (Toumani Camara), a 1st round pick, and two 1st round pick swaps from the Bucks. And honestly, this might be the rare win-win-win in NBA trades. The Bucks land Dame to pair with Giannis, an amazing combination that makes them title favorites for this upcoming season (shades of Clyde Drexler leaving Portland to play with Hakeem Olajuwon?), the Suns give up Ayton to get Nurkic and some bench pieces – a cost-effective move they needed to make given their 3 supermax stars – and the Blazers get a solid haul for Dame. Deandre Ayton is a former #1 overall pick who has underperformed in Phoenix. His contract is pretty large, but he’s only 25 and is a clear upgrade defensively over Nurkic with a lot of room for improvement. Jrue Holiday is one of the best defensive guards in the league, and he can score and handle the rock too. A few days after the initial Dame trade, the Blazers flipped Holiday to the Celtics for Malcolm Brogdon (a point guard who’s the reigning 6th Man of the Year), Robert Williams III (a young, injury-prone center who’s fantastic on defense when healthy), and two 1st round picks (a 2024 one from originally from Golden State and one in 2029). So here’s a recap of what the Blazers gave up and received:

Gave Up: Damian Lillard, Jusuf Nurkic, Nassir Little, Keon Johnson

Received: Deandre Ayton, Malcolm Brogdon, Robert Williams III, Toumani Camara, 3 1st round picks (GSW 2024, MIL 2029, BOS 2029), 2 1st round pick swaps (MIL 2028, MIL 2030).

I can’t help but be excited about the future. In sports, the goal is to win the championship, to be the very best. There’s no point in being pretty good only to fall short year after year. And if you look back at the history of the Blazers, that’s been the story: being pretty good, only to fall short year after year. Portland has made the postseason 37 times in its 53 seasons, good for almost 70%. Yet we’ve only made the Western Conference Finals seven times. And with Lillard, it was more of the same. Led by him and Coach Terry Stotts, we made the playoffs eight years in a row and reached the conference finals just once (a maddening series in 2019 against the Warriors where we choked a double-digit lead in seemingly every game of a clean sweep). So we fired Stotts, and now we’ve moved on from Lillard. Sacrificing being pretty good in the hopes of being the best in the long run. So maybe I’m excited just for the fresh start. This season there will be no expectations or high hopes. Winning takes a back seat to development. But after so many years of watching the same product, I’m ready for something new. A one-man isolation offense on a team that could never effectively rebound or play defense will hopefully be replaced by a team that shares the ball, plays above the rim, and can get a f*cking board, for Chrissake (sorry, that’s my PTSD talking)! And in the meantime, I will be rooting for Dame and the Bucks. I’m glad he went to another small-market team with passionate fans, and he with Giannis in the pick-and-roll might be literally unstoppable.

Even though Dame Time is over, I’m ready for Scoot Season. If you want to help me see the new-look Blazers when I’m home for winter break, my Venmo is @Zev-Green. I love you all.