The Moonshot – Why The Portland Trail Blazers Are Banking It All On Hansen Yang – Oregon Sports News

For much of the past week, I’ve been trying to make sense of the Portland Trail Blazers’ offseason plan.

On one hand, they shipped off Anfernee Simons to the Boston Celtics for Jrue Holiday, a move that signals the franchise is trying to move towards near-term respectability.

On the other hand, they then used their only draft pick in last week’s NBA draft to pick Hansen Yang, a raw 7’1 center prospect out of China. The Blazers passed up the opportunity to select several more developed “win now” prospects, such as Cedric Coward, Derik Queen, or Carter Bryant. Instead, they chose Yang, picking up a future unprotected first-round pick in the process in a trade with the Memphis Grizzlies. 

This week, they bought out Deandre Ayton, one of the centerpieces the team received in the Damian Lillard trade, clearing room for Yang to join a center rotation with Donavon Clingan, last year’s first-round draft pick.

I wrote last week that the team was pushing its bets to the middle of the table, but it appeared as though the team was unclear on what it was betting. I think I understand it now. Portland has no recent history of bringing in high-profile free agents. It’s not a traditional big-spending team. It’s not a big market. The team tried for years to bring in a running mate for one of the league’s best players, Lillard, and the best they could manage was trading for Jusuf Nurkic. 

With new ownership likely to arrive in the next year, the timeline for the team’s front office and coaching staff to prove they should retain their jobs is very narrow. Joe Cronin, draft guru Mike Schmitz, and coach Chauncey Billups need a moonshot. In Yang, they may have found one. All the other options on the table for Portland with the 11th pick were comfortable, as was the possibility of Illinois guard Kasparas Jakucionis at the 16th pick. Any one of them could have slotted into Portland’s roster and helped them get near or to the level of a play-in round seed. However, in an NBA landscape where two coaches of top-six seeds were fired before the playoffs started, and an Eastern Conference finals coach lost his job, just getting close to the playoffs isn’t going to be enough in the future. Enter Yang. The Blazers had scouted him for years; they had more intel on him than any other team. Cronin, Schmitz, and the Blazers front office team are staking their jobs on the pick. But if they had gone for a “safe” pick, their heads may have been rolling in a few years anyway. With Yang, the floor is somewhere below the basement, but the ceiling, according to the Blazers’ front office, which is to be believed given the amount of scouting they put in, is on the moon.

If Yang doesn’t pan out, new Blazers ownership will probably be cleaning house. But if he does? How does one fire a front office staff that outsmarted every other team in the league and all the armchair draft experts around it? 

I may disagree with a draft strategy of going entirely against the grain and believing that you are absolutely the most intelligent people in the room, but I can respect it. The Trail Blazers had a choice – settle for being a middle-of-the-road team or go big on a shot at getting into the upper echelon of the Western Conference. If Yang is the talent they believe he is, watching him pair with Clingan in battles with the Spurs and Victor Wembanyama in the coming years is going to be fun. Adding Holliday gives them a veteran guard who can provide an element that Scoot Henderson and Shaedon Sharpe don’t. If he doesn’t pan out, the current front office won’t be the ones trying to offload his expiring contract in a couple of years. 

Cronin and Billups both signed short-term contract extensions as the regular season wound down. Both give them a bit of protection as the team looks to find a new owner this offseason. Both received three-year terms, which provides them with the freedom to operate before any sale, but also doesn’t tie the team to them long-term. It also rewarded them for the work the team has done so far, coming from the bottom of the Western Conference to showing some serious potential this past season. With the small amount of freedom they have, they are shooting their shot this offseason. 

One way or another – crash and burn, or rapid rise to the top – the Trail Blazers are done being a middle-of-the-road team.