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Rip City Project Roundtable: Evaluating the Portland Trail Blazers 2019 Offseason

By Austin Carroll

Portland Trail Blazers (Photo by Jason Miller/Getty Images)
Portland Trail Blazers (Photo by Jason Miller/Getty Images) /
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Portland Trail Blazers
Hassan Whiteside #21 and Damian Lillard #0 of the Portland Trail Blazers (Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images) /

Bold trade acquisitions

Instead of waiting another year for the Blazers bad contracts to expire, Neil Olshey flipped Evan Turner, Moe Harkless and Meyers Leonard for the overpaid but also expiring contracts of Hassan Whiteside and Kent Bazemore. Are you happy with the trades the Blazers made, or could they have done more?

Brown: Both trades are amazing for the Trail Blazers. The Kent Bazemore addition brings in another solid shooter to round out the backcourt rotation while Hassan Whiteside gives the Trail Blazers a versatile rim protecting big that they haven’t hide in recent Trail Blazer history. Both players strengthen the depth of this team which will allow the Blazers to have a very lethal rotation.

Carroll: Let’s make one thing clear, Evan Turner was borderline unplayable in the postseason. Harkless immensely underperformed. Leonard actually did quite well but was far too inconsistent to be counted on for much of anything besides hitting wide open 3-point shots. Giving non-factors in the most critical of times for a valuable ‘3-and-D’ wing and a former All-Defensive Team member should be seen as a win. Bazemore adds a lot of versatility to the lineup and I strongly believe Whiteside is going to remind the league why he ever got that $96 million contract in the first place. But hey, maybe I’m underestimating Harkless’ intangible contributions to the team.

West:The Bazemore trade I liked. He’s better than Evan Turner and fills some of the holes created by the departures of Al-Farouq Aminu and Maurice Harkless. The Whiteside trade, not so much. I’d just rather have Harkless, I think he contributes more to winning than Whiteside. I get that they wanted a stop-gap at Center while Nurkic is out, but just let Zach Collins be that stop-gap. One defense of the trade is that Whiteside is going to excel on defense in Stotts’ drop back system, which is fair. But the league is flush with plodding centers who would also excel in it and do it on a much cheaper contract.