To Damian Lillard and the fans’ dismay, the Portland Trail Blazers lost out in the 2022 NBA Draft lottery and fell back one slot to the seventh-overall pick. Not only was it disappointing overall to take a step backward in the draft order, but it also meant that the half-season of disgraceful losing that the team and fanbase experienced was essentially for naught. Getting repeatedly blown out night after night to obtain a 37.2 percent chance at a top-four pick and a nine percent shot at the number one overall selection ultimately proved fruitless.
Even worse than the actual losses was what the Blazers had to sacrifice to handicap their team to such a level that they could guarantee defeat for themselves. CJ McCollum, Larry Nance Jr., Norman Powell, and Robert Covington were all shipped off in return for Eric Bledsoe, Josh Hart, Elijah Hughes, Didi Louzada, Joe Ingles’s expiring contract, two second-round picks, and a 2025 protected first-rounder courtesy of the Milwaukee Bucks. Making such lopsided trades could have been defended had the Blazers wound up in a position to acquire one of the top prospects in the draft as a result of that shedding of talent.
Portland Trail Blazers have options with the 7th-overall pick in the 2022 NBA Draft
But alas, the Trail Blazers now have to shape a roster around the pieces they obtained in those trades and just the seventh-overall pick in the upcoming draft. Despite my obvious discouragement, I do believe that there’s hope.
Portland does still have the “flexibility” that was repeatedly name-dropped as a central driver behind the deals they made. They’ll have options in free agency, in the trade market, and with the exceptions that they’ll have available to them this summer.
Even the seventh-overall pick offers additional maneuverability. Portland isn’t stuck in that slot despite what the lottery balls dictated. Through some clever wheeling and dealing, newly minted General Manager Joe Cronin could use that pick to improve the team in a variety of ways.