Question No. 3: Who’s worth keeping around next season?
To borrow an adage usually given to unproductive prospects: this team is always one season away from being “one season away.”
“This team was just a few plays away from making the Western Conference Finals a real battle a season ago. Add Jusuf Nurkić and a couple of pieces to the fold, and it could get dangerous,” they said.
The main characters of this summer’s “What If” will be Trevor Ariza, Rodney Hood, and Zach Collins. We’ll never know if they would have made up the difference, but regardless of what the rest of Portland’s Orlando trip holds, they’ll have at least one more opportunity to see which players they believe work best going forward.
Inevitably, if the Trail Blazers lose in Game 5, it could be, for some players, the last game they play in a Portland uniform. The pressure on Neil Olshey to not waste Damian Lillard’s prime all but ensures that to be the case.
Hassan Whiteside represents the obvious. He was about as productive an insurance policy as it got in Nurkić’s absence. But his play and overall enthusiasm seems to have fallen off a cliff or two, even in Terry Stotts’ experimental two-big lineups. Per PBP Stats, the Nurkić-Whiteside pairing has a -13.9 net rating in 45 Playoff minutes.
There’s an unusual aura surrounding this year’s Blazers. Never before has there been this much of a external discussion surrounding Terry Stotts’ job security, or even Olshey.
Whether or not it’s internal, though, is another question. But if I’m Terry Stotts, there’s two things I’m not doing, and one thing I am doing. I’m not waiting until the game’s decided to put Wenyen Gabriel in; I’m not taking Carmelo Anthony out once he gets hot. And I am going to have to coach the game of my life.
I think that means focusing on which players mean the most for the future — think Gabriel, an unrestricted free agent — a deeper analysis of how important Carmelo Anthony is to the future, and how much faith can one have in Anfernee Simons, who’s now 4-of-26 shooting in his postseason career.
Game Fives haven’t been beacons of hope in recent memory. Portland is 2-5 in them in the Stotts-Lillard era. And this one feels as though it could be culture-changing.