Trail Blazers face NBA trade deadline, Cousins- and Griffin-less West: Afternoon Blazer

There’s a little bit of sunshine here at the RCP international headquarters in Portland, Oregon, USA, Earth, Milky Way Galaxy, Universe. Seems like a good time for an Afternoon Blazer, yeah? Word.

Hello Trail Blazers fans! As we approach the Feb. 8 trade deadline, those of us in the NBA content creation business are hard at work writing (and often rewriting) a bunch of game previews and reviews. We also write a bunch of NBA trade stuff.

It’s an exciting time for all of us. Researching, reporting, scribbling notes on paper napkins. Scribbling notes on cloth napkins when nothing else is available. (Sorry, grandma!)

And sometimes, after a lot of hard work, and just as we’re about to hit PUBLISH (sometimes just after we hit PUBLISH), we find out that a player on a particular team is no longer a player on that particular team.

Or, in more speculative pieces (trade scenarios, what-ifs, what have you), we find out that all our speculation was for naught, since the player about whom we’ve been speculating is no longer worth speculating about. Because he, too, has already been traded.

Take Monday, for example.

Monday, For Example

By now, everybody knows about the blockbuster trade Monday between the L.A. Clippers and the Detroit Pistons. Adrian Wojnarowski, as usual, broke the story.

‏Once it was official, we all sat back and gawked: The Clippers traded Blake Griffin, Willie Reed and Brice Johnson to the Detroit Pistons in exchange for Tobias Harris, Avery Bradley, Boban Marjanovic and a bunch of draft picks.

Here at the RCP, we had already published a preview of Tuesday’s Trail Blazers-Clippers game. So, natch, we had to append an update to the story, since it featured Griffin kinda-sorta prominently.

But it didn’t stop there. We’d also written a piece wondering whether or not Bradley might be a good player for the Trail Blazers to pursue. That speculative article had to be modified pre-publication, since Bradley was included in the Griffin trade, too.

Still, readers love these speculative trade pieces. So we keep pumping them out.

What about Kevin Love in a Trail Blazers uniform? Yeah, we looked into that, too.

Some Monday, I tell ya.

What might happen between now and Feb. 8?

The Trail Blazers’ Future

What does the Griffin trade mean for the Portland Trail Blazers? Well, at first glance, it means the Clippers, who have been rising lately from the depths of the Western Conference, are less of a threat than they were Monday morning. This goes both for the game Tuesday night (since the new players are unlikely to suit up) and for the rest of the season.

Including Tuesday’s tilt, the Trail Blazers and the Clippers will face each other three more times this season. That’s three more times without Griffin.

The Clippers (25-24; ninth in the Western Conference) are looking up at the Trail Blazers (27-22; tied for sixth in the West with the New Orleans Pelicans). And Portland has been playing some of its best basketball of the season. It seems unlikely that a Griffin-less Clippers team will be able to make up much ground in the standings.

I mean, how do the Clippers replace Griffin? He’s the face of the franchise, especially since Chris Paul was traded to the Houston Rockets. And he averages 22.6 points, 7.9 rebounds and 5.4 assists per game this season. That kind of production doesn’t grow on trees. The addition of Harris and Bradley to the Clippers’ lineup helps; they can certainly score, at least.

Trail Blazers and the Pelicans

Another potential threat to the Trail Blazers’ position among Western Conference teams vying for a top seed is the New Orleans Pelicans. But they, too, should have trouble catching Portland.

On Friday, Wojnarowski reported the news that Pelicans fans had been dreading.

What does the loss of DeMarcus Cousins mean for the Pelicans and, by extension, the Trail Blazers? We looked into it here. 

The Trail Blazers and Pelicans only play one more time this season (March 27 in New Orleans), but the two teams are currently neck and neck in the Western Conference race. The loss of Cousins is certainly a huge blow to the Pelicans’ playoff chances.

On Tuesday, Wojnarowski reported that a potential deal between the Pelicans and the Chicago Bulls (whom the Trail Blazers play Wednesday) had failed.

Can the Pelicans compete without Cousins? Can the Clippers compete without Griffin?

Both seem unlikely.

Next: Portland Trail Blazers recall Wade Baldwin from G League

There’s still a lot of basketball to play. And the trade deadline is still more than a week away.

But with two of the Trail Blazers’ conference rivals experiencing massive upheavals, Portland is in a good position to continue its climb up the standings without looking too often in the rearview mirror.