Portland Trail Blazers

Trail Blazers offseason outlook: Portland faces tough questions after playoff sweep

2017-18 Portland Trail Blazers (Getty Images)

Big issue 1: Does anyone get fired? GM Neil Olshey agreed to a contract extension that will keep him around until 2021, though owner Paul Allen has enough in the bank to cover Olshey's deal if he decides to make a change.

There have been light rumblings suggesting coach Terry Stotts could be fired, but that would only happen if Olshey goes, too. Allen has not shown much inclination to getting rid of Olshey, so it's likely that the brain trust stays in place.


The expectation is that the Blazers will attempt to do what Stotts' former Mavericks colleague Dwane Casey did in Toronto this year. Casey altered the team's offense to reduce the reliance on getting the two guards into the pick-and-roll (Portland got more offense from the PNR than any other team this year, as Toronto did last year), and the Raptors were a better team for it.

The Raptors, though, had the pieces in place to construct the best bench in the league, a key to their success this year. Portland doesn't have the same depth, which will continue to be an issue.


If Nurkic gets a $15-18 million per year offer elsewhere, there's no way the Blazers can match - that vaults them deep into luxury tax territory and costs them exponentially more than the value of the deal. Moreover, the league is littered with teams crying buyer's remorse over big contracts for centers. Portland may decide that it can only let Nurkic walk and hope that Zach Collins is its big man of the future.




Portland will have the No. 24 pick in this year's draft, and it does not owe future first-rounders to other teams.

Wait till next year: The Blazers won 49 games and plucked the No. 3 seed in the West. Given the recent contract misses by Olshey - there are still two years and $36 million left for Evan Turner, and two years, $22 million for Meyers Leonard - there's no hope for personnel improvement and, in fact, the Blazers may have to take a step backward by losing Nurkic.

Trading either Lillard or McCollum would certainly shake things up, but it's a good bet that they'll give this group at least another year.

Again, the hope is that Stotts can go back to the drawing board and alter the Portland offense the way that Toronto altered its offense. But that's likely wishful thinking. The Raptors have better and more cohesive talent around its star guards, and when you look at the Blazers roster, there are no obvious players for whom you'd like to get extra shots.


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