The Portland Trail Blazers haven't quite nailed their draft picks. Shaedon Sharpe, Scoot Henderson, Kris Murray, Donovan Clingan, and Yang Hansen were all first-round picks during this rebuild, yet so far it's only Clingan who's truly emerged as a building block.
Sharpe looks like the odd man out to start the season, considering Portland is 3-0 and moving the ball well in his absence. Henderson's future is up in the air after the Blazers didn't reach a rookie-scale extension before the season. Murray is already in Memphis after failing to show any progress as a shooter.
The jury is still out on 21-year-old Hansen. That said, it was a concerningly bad rookie season, raising the question of why they took a backup center after Clingan was the one pick to actually look the part of a future starter at his position.
Typically, these draft struggles would spell disaster for a rebuilding team, but fortunately general manager Joe Cronin has more than made up for it by winning the vast majority of his trades.
Joe Cronin's bold trades continue to pay off for Blazers
Deni Avdija and Toumani Camara were two players Cronin stole via trade who emerged as frontcourt building blocks alongside Clingan. He's somehow even now managed to make up for the Henderson pick by trading for Ja Morant to upgrade at point guard. What about flipping Anfernee Simons for Jrue Holiday?
The best thing is the value of these deals. Holiday and Morant required zero draft picks as part of the respective packages. Avdija went for just two first-round picks, two second-round picks, and Malcolm Brogdon.
Few saw these trades coming, whether it was sending Damian Lillard to the Milwaukee Bucks instead of the Miami Heat, attaching draft picks as a rebuilding team to acquire an established "role player" in Deni Avdija, trading for Jrue Holiday a second time with an intention to keep him this time around, or most recently, landing a polarizing star in Ja Morant to give themselves a self-created backcourt logjam.
Cronin takes these bold bets on talent because the value is too good to pass up. He stole a rising star, a former two-time All-Star, a two-time champion, and someone who's already made the All-Defensive Second Team. These polarizing trades have shaped the Blazers we know now and successfully ended this rebuild.
It was a strange way to go about returning to this level of play. It's not like Sharpe or Henderson, the first two top-ten picks from this rebuild, are doing the heavy lifting. But with Cronin's bold bet on Morant already looking like yet another initially misunderstood trade, only to ultimately work out in the Blazers' favor, it's time we give him the benefit of the doubt.
Blazers should lean further into Joe Cronin's strengths as a trader
This trend and Cronin's strength in making trades around the league should even have Portland consider leaning into it further. They have valuable draft capital from that Lillard trade with the Bucks. Cronin's track record suggests he's far better at evaluating established talent in the league than projecting prospects he selects in the draft. With that being the case, it could make sense for the Blazers to use at least some of those Bucks picks as the headliner in a package for Cronin to acquire yet another established piece to continue adding to this exciting roster.
With them now back to playing postseason-caliber basketball, Portland has further incentive to accelerate the rebuild in an attempt to find that missing piece. But if these past trades are any indication, it's someone we won't quite expect.
Cronin seems to capitalize on teams' situations extremely well, so that could perhaps be our next clue as far as where to look. The Wizards were open to trading Avdija as they wanted to reset their rebuilding timeline. The Celtics didn't necessarily want to trade Holiday, but knew they had to in order to duck the second apron. Memphis essentially had a slow-roasting fire sale after eventually trading their trio of Desmond Bane, Jaren Jackson Jr., and Morant.
With Morant's injury history and off-court reputation, this was the perfect buy-low opportunity for Cronin and the Blazers. Although we're incredibly early in the season, you can already tell how well this bold bet is already paying off for the Blazers.
Then again, it raises the question: why can't Portland evaluate talent this well in the draft?
Sharpe wasn't necessarily a miss with the No. 7 pick, but Henderson certainly was at No. 3 with the Thompson twins going immediately after. This team was likely going to be stuck in purgatory with these average-to-below-average picks, had it not been for Cronin's tremendous strength as a trade evaluator and negotiator.
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