Portland Trail Blazers: Neil Olshey’s biggest mistake

Although the Trail Blazers do miss many pieces from last year, assuming that Anfernee Simons could replace Seth Curry was Neil Olshey’s biggest mistake.

Of all of the players that the Portland Trail Blazers let go this offseason, it seemed like Seth Curry would be the easiest to replace. Slide Anfernee Simons right into his role, and everything is solved. Perhaps, the Blazers thought, Simons would even be an upgrade over Curry. I’m not going to sit here and say that Neil Olshey was crazy for originally thinking this. Many fans, including myself, felt the same way. However, this just simply hasn’t been the case this season.

Don’t get me wrong. Simons has incredible potential and is a very valuable piece for the Blazers moving forward. At 6-foot-4, he is tall for his position, very shifty, has incredible bounce, and has one of the smoothest jump shots I’ve ever seen. The talent is obviously there. I’m just not sure he even knows what to do with it yet.

Last season, Curry averaged 7.9 points, 1.6 rebounds, and 0.9 assists on 45.6 percent shooting from the field and 45 percent shooting from three. This season, Simons is averaging 9.0 points, 2.4 rebounds, and 1.5 assists on 40.2 percent shooting from the field and 33.5 percent shooting from beyond the arc. While Simons’ stats may seem pretty comparable to Curry’s on the surface, there’s no doubt that Curry was much more efficient and reliable (while also playing fewer minutes) than Simons.

For starters, Seth Curry is a much better defender than Simons. Despite his length, Simons has a lot of trouble staying in front of his man and is undoubtedly a minus defender at this point in his career. While Curry was never anything special on the defensive end, he was definitely solid (and always did a great job guarding his brother, Stephen Curry).

Curry was also much better at running the Blazers’ offense than Simons has been. While Curry did a great job of moving the ball, running off screens, and taking efficient shots, Simons seems to only be effective when he has the ball and ranks 188th out of 200 eligible players in the league in shot efficiency this year (50.4 true shooting percentage). For comparison, Seth Curry ranks 12th in the league this year, with a 62.9 true shooting percentage. We all witnessed just how efficient he was in last year’s playoffs!

While I am fully aware that it would have been difficult for the Blazers to beat Dallas’ offer of four-years, $32 million, it probably would have been a good idea for them to have signed another backup point guard to help Simons ease into his role rather than relying on Simons and Mario Hezonja to create for the bench unit who currently ranks dead last in the NBA in scoring at 26.8 points per game.

Failing to have the forethought to address these issues has ended up hurting Portland this season, and for that reason, I believe this was Neil Olshey’s biggest mistake over the summer.