Turning a critical eye to a team’s moves in hindsight is always a difficult endeavor. While it may seem obvious after more than a half-decade, judging the mistakes that a team made in the past is often unfair given the reality they faced.
Even still, the way that the Portland Trail Blazers handled the 2017 NBA Draft not only hurt their future, but kept them from becoming a real contender.
By taking a trip with a time machine, we can observe where the Blazers were back in 2016-2017. The team was in the middle of the Terry Stotts era, having built its roster around soon-to-be first team All-NBA star Damian Lillard, as well as CJ McCollum and deadline addition Jusuf Nurkic. That roster didn’t lead to playoff success, as the team had only ranked 25th in defensive rating, which contributed to their 41-41 record.
Knowing that the team needed to make changes to contend, which was especially important with Dame entering his athletic prime, former general manager Neil Olshey made a monumental move in the 2017 draft.
He traded the 15th and 20th pick, the latter of which was acquired in the Nurkic trade, and packaged them to move up to the 10th pick.
Armed with both the 10th and 26th picks, the Blazers tried to make up for past roster mistakes to become contenders, but instead did the opposite. Although they made the Western Conference finals a few years later, the missteps in the 2017 draft kept the Blazers from ever becoming true contenders for the NBA title.
Draft Mistake #1: Drafting Zach Collins
Entering the 2017 NBA Draft, the Blazers had a few positions figured out already in their team concept. They were centered around Lillard, who’d been snubbed from all-star teams but was still an elite scorer and point guard.
He had a co-star in McCollum, who was averaging a career-high in points per game.
Finally, the team had traded for Nurkic, who’d been pushed out of the Denver Nuggets’ future for a little-known second-round player named Nikola Jokic.
What was left was the need for game-changing forwards. The team had tried to fix those gaps by bringing in Evan Turner, Al-Farouq Aminu, and Noah Vonleh, but none of these three players had panned out in the way the team had hoped.
To shore up their position of need, Portland selected Zach Collins out of Gonzaga. He became an NBA draft darling after a dominant defensive display in the NCAA tournament, and by the draft he was safely projected in the top 15 of the draft by pundits.
While obviously the mistake was selecting Collins, it isn’t completely – he was a poor player for the team. Most of that can be blamed on tough leg injuries that made him a shell of his college self.
Instead, the error that the Blazers made was trying to fit their last, best chance at a lottery star on a position of need.
Had the Blazers taken the best player available, depending on their board, they might have ended up with either Donovan Mitchell or Bam Adebayo. Both were also locks for the top 15 and were available at No. 10, but due to the presence of McCollum and Nurkic, the team passed on both.
While it’s impossible to know how either Mitchell or Adebayo would have developed in a Portland jersey, the decision to go with positional need over star potential cheated the team out of a chance to add another all-star to the roster.
Draft Mistake #2: Trading the 15th and 20th picks for the 10th pick
If the Blazers weren’t trading up to grab a potential future star at 10, it begs the question of what were they thinking. Given the team already had two stars, it would be understandable if they were more concerned with depth and following the formula of filling positional needs.
Had they stayed at the 15th and 20th picks, they would’ve had the chance to grab key role players at either forward position. Ten of the top 14 picks in the 2017 NBA draft were either guards or centers, which led to a veritable glut of forward prospects in the middle of the first round.
Although Jayson Tatum, Josh Jackson, and Jonathan Isaac had already been taken, there are a number of forwards drafted that year that are still playing in the NBA today.
If they wanted to lean toward offense, they could’ve targeted John Collins with the 15th pick. If they were more inclined to beef up their defensive prowess, the team could’ve swung for OG Anunoby or doubled up at center with Jarrett Allen.
Again, it’s easy to condemn the poor selections with the benefit of current context, but the drafting philosophy from the team looked flawed then and now. If they wanted a star, they shouldn’t have taken Zach Collins.
If they wanted a forward like Collins, they could’ve selected one like the other Collins, T.J. Leaf, or Harry Giles at 15 and targeted a wing like Anunoby at 20th.
Instead of building out their depth, which would’ve been a savvy way to support the team they’d constructed through the draft and the trade deadline, the Blazers zigged when they should’ve zagged and missed out on adding multiple rotation forwards to their team.
Draft Mistake #3: Drafting Caleb Swanigan
This section is particularly painful because Swanigan didn’t pan out in the league, but mostly because he unfortunately passed away a few years ago. It’s hard to deal with any former player passing away, but the loss of Swanigan is especially painful.
Coming out of Purdue, Swanigan had some obvious warts as a basketball player, but he was universally loved for his intangibles and had knacks for rebounding, passing, and interior scoring that few could match, along with a great reputation as a teammate.
When putting this pick under the microscope, however, it makes less and less sense that the team chose Swanigan. They’d just drafted Collins, settling the starting power forward spot. They still had Ed Davis and Noah Vonleh as depth pieces at the four, which sent Swanigan to the end of the bench.
While he may have been an upside swing, it still doesn’t make sense not to try to target a wing, given it was more of a position of need at the time. None of Mo Harkless, Turner, nor Aminu should’ve precluded that.
The Blazers could’ve targeted Kyle Kuzma, Josh Hart, or even former Oregon Duck Dillon Brooks at the end of the first round.
Taking one of these players even after the selection of Collins would’ve made more sense from a roster-building perspective around their guard tandem of Dame and CJ. Instead, the doubling down on power forwards serves as a befuddling reminder of the ineptitude of the Olshey organization.
Who knows what could’ve happened had the Blazers taken any of Mitchell, Adebayo, John Collins, Anunoby, Kuzma, or Hart. Maybe they would’ve suffered the same fate of a single playoff run.
Maybe, however, a better management of draft picks and roster creation could’ve not only given the Blazers a better team, but made them good enough to challenge the waning dynasty of the Golden State Warriors.