To win with Damian Lillard, Portland Trail Blazers must embrace the youth

Why the Portland Trail Blazers should embrace their youth movement

Sharpe, Walker, and Watford probably won’t be of much assistance if the Blazers are trying to contend next season, but Portland’s road to fielding a true title threat is an impossible climb anyways. Those young guns, though, could very well be key rotation members for the 2023-2024 NBA season, but to do so, they’ll need the experience and playing time to develop. With a full year playing on a competitive team under their belt, there’s a very high chance that Sharpe, Walker, and Watford will be better than their more seasoned counterparts.

They, along with Keon Johnson and two-way player Brandon Williams, could also impress enough to become valuable trade chips if given the opportunities necessary to do so. The NBA world knows who Justise Winslow and Drew Eubanks are at this point in their careers. They’re useful but flawed role players. All of the Blazers’ young players could turn out to be more than that if developed properly, which will require experience.

The best part of this option is what happens in the worst possible outcome. Say the Blazers do feature Jabari Walker, Trendon Watford, and their other prospects, and they absolutely stink it up early on, leading Portland to struggle through the first half of the 2022-2023 season. If that’s the case and they find themselves staring up at the guaranteed playoff seeds halfway through the year, then Portland can simply lean even further into their youth movement, give their prospects more opportunities to blossom, and commit to tanking for a ridiculously loaded 2023 draft in which they’ll keep their own first-round pick should it land in the lottery again and convey it to the Chicago Bulls otherwise.

Then, in the 2023-2024 season, the Blazers can truly try to compete with Dame, a more experienced Ant and Nas, a developed Shaedon Sharpe, Jabari Walker, and Trendon Watford or whoever they bring back in trades, and their 2023 lottery pick, say Victor Wembenyama or one of the Thompson twins.

The Portland Trail Blazers kept one eye on the future this summer instead of fully committing to fielding a contender around Dame next season. Now, to truly give Lillard his best shot of winning one in Rip City, they’ll have to continue building for the future by leaning into their youth movement.