The Portland Trail Blazers somehow manage to have logjams in both the backcourt and frontcourt, coming at the expense of their wing/forward depth.
They've moved on from Jerami Grant, Kris Murray, Caleb Love, and Matisse Thybulle, while Blake Wesley remains a free agent. The replacements? Ja Morant, Micah Potter, John Tonje, Jeremy Sochan, and Branden Carlson.
This team now has four point guards and four centers, but different reasons behind each logjam.
Attempting to make sense of the Trail Blazers' roster logjams
The frontcourt depth is insurance against both Robert Williams III's injury risk and Yang Hansen's inability to make an immediate impact. Potter and Sochan are currently non-guaranteed, but Carlson and whoever ultimately joins him will be the stopgaps to buy Hansen more time to develop.
The backcourt is almost the exact opposite situation. Portland doesn't know what their backcourt of the future looks like, so they made a buy-low move to bring in Morant as another potential option.
Veterans Damian Lillard and Jrue Holiday have closing windows, and it's possible the Blazers eventually even trade the latter (though rumors of any potential buyout have been shot down thanks Marc Stein of The Stein Line).
Is the long-term answer at point guard Morant, Scoot Henderson, or someone else entirely? If Morant is too poor a fit to make this experiment work, Portland could use one of those valuable future Milwaukee Bucks draft picks to select a new point guard, for instance. But with each new scenario and option that pops up at point guard, the less likely it becomes that Henderson turns out to be that guy.
Had he been able to take the keys to the backcourt, Portland would be navigating its backcourt situation extremely differently this summer. Henderson has only been pushed further down the offensive hierarchy.
With so many playmakers and ball-handlers between Morant, Avdija, Holiday, and Lillard, it's hard to see a scenario in which this is finally the breakout year where he takes over the backcourt. If anything, that was going to be last year when Lillard was out, and Anfernee Simons was shipped to Boston.
Scoot Henderson may have lost his chance at the keys to Portland's backcourt
Now, Henderson's best chance at carving out a role is to buy into his development as a 3-and-D guard. He's become a far better off-ball guard than given credit for, quietly redefining his playstyle to fit into what the Blazers need. You can definitely see the Holiday veteran impact in Henderson's two-way development.
But if Portland's former No. 3 overall pick is having to evolve into a 3-and-D role player to complement other players' games, you have to wonder about how he truly fits into the long-term plan. At the very least, it makes him more expendable as the Blazers decided to deprioritize him with their moves this offseason.
That also comes at a significant time in Henderson's Blazers future, seeing as he's eligible for a rookie-scale extension (similar to what Portland reached with Sharpe and Camara prior to last season). It's not as clear whether Portland will reach an extension with Henderson.
They have a lot to sort out with their roster in general, but Scoot in particular because of the ticking clock that comes from his contract situation.
If Portland still views Henderson as a long-term part of its plans, perhaps an extension would present another buy-low opportunity as his inconsistent play and injuries have prevented a breakout up until this point.
That said, didn't they express their confidence level in Henderson by bringing in Morant this summer?
With the complexity and number of layers in Portland's new-look backcourt, maybe the best answer is to continue simply doing nothing. That's the approach the front office seems to have taken ever since surprisingly landing Morant, with their subsequent follow-up moves all coming on the margins.
Eventually they'll have to do something to sort out this backcourt hierarchy. But why not wait until February's trade deadline to provide a larger sample size to help with the evaluation process?
There are too many moving parts to see a clear path forward as of now, but playing time should give Portland much-needed clarity to find a working formula. Now, it's up to Henderson to prove he belongs during that time. He's trending downward at the worst possible time as far as extension talks, and needs to do everything he can to prove his worth in what suddenly appears to be a make-or-break season.
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