What writers are saying about the Portland Trail Blazers’ early playoff exit

The New Orleans Pelicans swept the Portland Trail Blazers out of the first round of the playoffs. And there’s no shortage of hot takes from NBA writers regarding Portland’s surprising dismissal — and the franchise’s path forward.

If the Blazers hadn’t been destroyed by the Pelicans in the first round of the Western Conference Playoffs — in four swift, punishing defeats — I might be prepping for Game 6 right about now.

Alas, there is no Game 6.

There wasn’t even a Game 5.

And while I covered Neil Olshey’s post-sweep interview and my colleague Nate Mann is dutifully reporting on the exit interviews of the players, the well of stories starts to run dry at this time of year, especially when the team you cover is no longer playing.

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I didn’t want to sit here twiddling my thumbs. So I looked around to see what other writers had to say about our beloved Trail Blazers.

Blazers Critics: Near

There’s no shortage of criticism for this Blazers team, for its management and for its coaching. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, much of that criticism comes from right here in Rip City.

John Canzano of The Oregonian/OregonLive writes, “Portland may have been the No. 3 seed in the West during playoffs, but it felt to me like the Blazers moved one step forward and two steps backward in the last 12 months.”

Canzano argues that nobody on the Blazers roster “should be off limits” as far as trades are concerned — up to and including Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum.

NBC Sports Northwest’s Jason Quick, writing in the aftermath of the Pelicans’ Game 3 beatdown of the Blazers, said the series had by that point become “a laugher, an embarrassment for the Trail Blazers” with “New Orleans being more aggressive, more physical and more … everything.”

Peter Sampson, writing at Blazer’s Edge, says he “resisted the ‘trade CJ McCollum’ cries for more than a year. … This series against the Pelicans showed me why that possibility needs to at least be explored.”

Blazers Critics: Far

Next we turn to some of the things being written outside the often insular world of Rip City basketball life.

Sean Deveney, national NBA writer for Sporting News, thinks the Blazers will stick with Lillard and McCollum, as well as head coach Terry Stotts and president of basketball operations Neil Olshey.

“The expectation is that the Blazers will attempt to do what Stotts’ former Mavericks colleague Dwane Casey did in Toronto this year,” Deveney writes. “Casey altered the team’s offense to reduce the reliance on getting the two guards into the pick-and-roll … and the Raptors were a better team for it.”

Tim Bontemps, writing in the Washington Post, thinks the Blazers’ “roster isn’t good enough. Anyone watching Portland in this series (against the Pelicans) could see what the game plan was. Take Lillard, in particular, out of the series and make his teammates beat them. His teammates couldn’t do it. They couldn’t really come close.”

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And, finally, we turn to BasketballInsiders.com for this analysis from editor and publisher Steve Kyler who says, “The narrative out of Portland is no one is going to panic and overreact, but it seems fair to question the security of president Neil Olshey and even head coach Terry Stotts. … The fact that no one has been fired … bodes well for the leadership remaining intact; the question is how aggressively will the roster change for a team that failed pretty miserably in the postseason?”

So there you have it. Just a small sampling of a larger discussion about the Blazers from the world of NBA writers near and far. We’ll surely debate these topics and more as we head into the offseason and prepare for the 2018-2019 Blazers campaign.