The Damian Lillard era in Portland is coming to an end. Whether the Trail Blazers trade Dame to the Miami Heat or elsewhere, and whether it happens during the summer, during the first half of the regular season or at the trade deadline, the end is imminent.
It’ll be difficult for many fans to step back and look at the big picture because of the love Lillard has shown to the city and the team and the way that love has been reciprocated. But it’s time for both parties to move on.
To that end, it’s an entertaining and interesting exercise to look back at why the Lillard era never produced a championship-caliber team. What were the Trail Blazers missing?
Ranking the 10 worst Trail Blazers starters of the Damian Lillard era
The easy answer is that Portland could never find a way to surround Lillard with the right combination of talent. Whether it was purely an injection of skill or simply more of the type of players Dame needed to play with, the Blazers never found what they needed.
Here are some of the most epic fails of the Portland front office during Lillard’s tenure that contributed to the team’s struggle to get over the hump and truly compete for an NBA championship.
The criteria for this list is a minimum of 20 games started in a season (with one exception). Rather than counting stats – points, rebounds, assists – advanced metrics, such as win shares, offensive and defensive rating, VORP (value over replacement player) and box plus-minus will be used to gauge a player’s impact, or lack thereof, on a team in a given year.
10. The best of the worst: Trevor Ariza, 2019-20 season
You’ll notice a trend with the first three players on this list. Trevor Ariza’s 2019-20 campaign just happens to be the best of that trio.
The Trail Blazers traded for Ariza and Kent Bazemore during that season to save $12.3 million and cut their luxury tax bill in half. Ariza started 21 games for Portland and averaged 11.0 points, 4.8 rebounds, 2.0 assists and 1.6 steals. He shot 49 percent from the floor and 40 percent from three.
It was the UCLA forward’s 16th NBA season at age 34, which makes those numbers fairly respectable. He was a consistent three-and-D option for the Blazers when he was on the floor, the same type of player he was for most of his career.
However, an aging Ariza only registered a 0.3 VORP, meaning he was hardly more valuable than a “replacement player” – a theoretical player on a minimum salary who shouldn’t part of an NBA rotation.
Essentially, Ariza wasn’t terrible during his time with the Trail Blazers, but he was far from a starting-caliber player.
9. Rodney Hood, 2019-20 season
Believe it or not, Lillard played with some rather poor wings in Portland (that’s sarcasm). As Ariza was performing at a less-than-acceptable rate in ’19-20, Hood was doing even worse.
The former Duke Blue Devil also started 21 times that season. He also averaged 11.0 points. But other than shooting well from three, Hood didn’t bring anything of value to Portland.
He was a little above average offensively (small sample size) but below average defensively. He was worth 1.1 win shares, meaning his play contributed 1.1 wins to a Blazers team that finished eighth in the Western Conference and lost in five games to the Los Angeles Lakers in the first round of the bubble playoffs.
For reference, Hassan Whiteside was second on the team in win shares at 8.5.
Another day, another failed wing experiment in Portland.
8. Kent Bazemore, 2019-20 season
Bazemore came to Portland with Ariza, but despite playing more games (starting 21 and playing 43), contributed even less than he and Hood.
The 30-year-old guard averaged 7.9 points and 4.0 rebounds on 35 percent shooting and 33 percent shooting from three. Bazemore proved himself to be of very little value during his time with the Blazers.
The 6-foot-4 swing man was dead last on the team in win shares at -0.2 (so he contributed to less than zero Portland victories, statistically speaking). He had a VORP of -0.3 – the Trail Blazers would have been better if they took a free agent guard off the street, put him in a Rip City jersey, and tossed him into Bazemore’s starting spot.
The Old Dominion product had some good NBA seasons as part of rotations in Golden State, Atlanta and LA. His time with Portland? Not so much.
7. Jake Layman, 2018-19 season
Name the legitimate rotation members of the only Lillard-led team to make the Western Conference Finals. Jake Layman probably isn’t one of the first to swim to the front of your mind.
Layman started 33 games for that Portland team, the only player outside of the usual starting five of Lillard, CJ McCollum, Maurice Harkless, Al-Farouq Aminu and Jusuf Nurkic to start more than eight times. The 6-foot-8 forward averaged 7.6 points and 3.1 rebounds in 18.7 minutes with 51/33/70 shooting splits.
He didn’t blow the roof off by any means, but the former Maryland standout was a fairly useful player when he was on the floor for Portland. He was third on the team in offensive rating for anyone who played more than 900 minutes and was fourth in defensive rating.
He was sixth on Lillard’s best Blazers team with 3.1 win shares, proving to be a solid player who did his job when called upon, even if he didn’t really belong in any NBA starting lineup.
Portland traded Layman to Minnesota the next season. He played three years with the Timberwolves and then faded out of the NBA.
6. Drew Eubanks, 2021-2023
To be fair, Drew Eubanks should never have been a starting center in the NBA. But due to injuries and a lack of other roster options, he started 50 games in Portland across the past two seasons.
He proved to be a serviceable big man for the Trail Blazers, though, despite standing 6-foot-9.
Eubanks averaged 14.5 points and 8.5 rebounds on 65 percent shooting in 22 starts during the 2021-22 season after first signing with Portland on a 10-day contract. That led to a $1.8 million deal to return to the Blazers last season when he started 28 of 78 games. He wasn’t as great statistically as he was the previous year, but Eubanks proved invaluable to a team that had an injury prone center in Jusuf Nurkic and no true backup.
His advanced stats all rose across the board in 2022-23 as the former Oregon State big man used his energy, hustle and solid athleticism to max out his physical abilities and provide some sort of stability at the five for Portland.
Eubanks parlayed that into $2.3 million deal with the Phoenix Suns this season, where he’ll have a chance to compete for an NBA title.
5. Derrick Jones Jr., 2020-21 season
The Trail Blazers’ never-ending quest to find solid wing play and a dramatic roster shake-up at the trade deadline combined to get career journeyman backup Derrick Jones Jr. 43 starts in 2020-21.
Gary Trent Jr. and Norman Powell were sent packing at the deadline along with CJ McCollum and Portland’s desire to win games. That opened the door for Jones Jr., who averaged 6.8 points and 3.5 rebounds in an unnecessarily large role, even on a tanking team.
The lanky 6-foot-5 forward was worth 2.4 win shares and finished the season with a VORP of 0.2. His offensive and defensive ratings were both middle of the pack on a Portland team destined for a top-10 pick.
It’s still the only season in Jones’ career that he started more than 16 games.
4. Evan Turner, 2017-18 season
Portland signed Turner to a lucrative multi-year contract, but the former Ohio State Buckeye never lived up to the deal. As was the case throughout his NBA career, the idea of Turner was always better than the player himself. A 6-foot-6 guard who’s versatile on both ends of the floor? Sure. Except that’s not quite who Turner turned out to be.
The 2017-18 campaign was the second of Turner’s stint in Portland and also his worst. Despite starting almost half the season, he averaged just 8.2 points and 3.1 rebounds on 45 percent shooting. His defense and playmaking were supposed to be his calling cards, but he only managed to average 2.2 assists and 1 total stock (steals plus blocks).
His offensive win share total of 0.5 was 10th on the team and his total win shares ranked eighth behind players like Shabazz Napier and Ed Davis. He also chipped in a -0.3 VORP.
The ’17-18 season was the worst of Turner’s ill-fated three-year stint in Portland. He spent a year with the Timberwolves after leaving the Blazers before falling out of the league entirely.
3. Noah Vonleh, 2015-16 season
Now we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel.
Noah Vonleh was a top-10 pick of the Charlotte Hornets in 2014, but the former Indiana Hoosier never figured out how to use his athletic gifts in North Carolina. After just one season, the Trail Blazers decided to take a flier on Vonleh as part of the trade that sent Nic Batum to Charlotte, hoping he’d find his NBA footing next to Lillard.
It didn’t work out.
The 6-foot-10 big man got a fair shot, starting 56 games in 2015-16, but it started to become clear that Vonleh wasn’t going to figure it out as a pro. In more than 15 minutes a night, he averaged just 3.6 points and 3.9 rebounds on 42 percent shooting.
He was dead last on the team with a -0.6 VORP and contributed nothing offensively. His defensive box plus-minus (a box score estimate of the defensive points per 100 possessions a player contributed above a league-average player) was -0.3 and his offensive box plus-minus was a horrific -3.9.
Vonleh was clearly one of the worst starters of the Lillard era.
2. CJ Elleby, 2021-22 season
It speaks to just how hard Portland was trying to tank that a 21-year-old CJ Elleby started 28 games in ’21-22. The 6-foot-6 wing spent a whopping two seasons in the NBA, the second of which was a forgettable campaign.
In 20.2 minutes a night, the second-round pick averaged 5.8 points and 3.9 rebounds on 39 percent shooting and 29 percent shooting from deep.
He was last on a team that played 27 players during the season with a VORP of -1.0. He was a -3.5 in offensive box plus-minus and -1.5 defensively. He was tied with Greg Brown and Dennis Smith Jr. in win shares.
It’s pretty clear why this was Elleby’s final season as an NBA player.
1. Victor Claver, 2012-13 season
The Trail Blazers selected Victor Claver with the 22nd overall pick in the 2012 NBA Draft. Portland did what it could to give Claver a shot in his rookie campaign, but it became very obvious very fast he wasn’t going to be what the franchise thought.
This is the one time we’ll take liberty with the 20 games started rule. Only five players started more than 16 games during this season as the Blazers rolled with Lillard, J.J. Hickson, LaMarcus Aldridge, Batum and Wesley Matthews for almost the entire year.
The only other player to start double digit games was Claver, who was on the court for the opening tip 16 times.
The Spaniard managed to average a whopping 3.8 points and 2.4 rebounds while shooting 39 percent from the floor. He was a minus in offensive win shares, defensive win shares, total win shares, offensive box plus-minus, total box plus-minus and VORP.
Claver played 31 games the rest of his NBA career before flaming out after three seasons.
On the bright side, he can say he’s now been handed The Worst Blazers Player of the Damian Lillard Era trophy.