Time for contenders to double down
The ever-so icy CJ McCollum agreed to a three-year, $100 million max contract extension with Portland on Tuesday. He will be a Trail Blazer for the next five years, and so will Damian Lillard, who signed a four-year super max extension worth $196 million to stay with his team through the 2024-25 season.
There has never been a better time for a contender to double down on itself than the present, whether doing so results in a championship or not. Kevin Durant’s departure from Golden State, coupled with Klay Thompson’s torn ACL, signaled the beginning of a Western Conference arms race. Stars joined forces and contenders made trades. The West is wide open, and the Trail Blazers, who made it to the conference finals only to be swept by the Durant-less Warriors, have as good a chance as anyone to contend for a championship.
But will their additions this summer be enough to finally get them over the hump? Maybe it doesn’t matter.
Let’s recap Portland’s offseason. The Trail Blazers traded Meyers Leonard and Mo Harkless for embattled but talented big man Hassan Whiteside. They moved Evan Turner for Kent Bazemore, who at the very least is a much more capable three-point shooter than who he was traded for. They re-signed Rodney Hood at the mid-level exception, then signed Anthony Tolliver, Mario Hezonja and Pau Gasol to minimum contracts. More importantly, Portland will welcome back versatile big man Jusuf Nurkic, who suffered multiple compound fractures to his left leg in March, then underwent surgery that ended the best season of his career.
Zach Collins will play a key role in his third year as a floor-spacing big with a mean streak. The Trail Blazers are also expected to see more out of Anfernee Simons, the prep-to-pro 20-year-old guard who slid to Portland at pick No. 24 in last year’s draft. Finally, they added wing depth in this year’s draft by selecting North Carolina’s Nassir Little 25th overall. The Trail Blazers project to be a very good team, possibly matching their 53-win season that tied for the third-best record in the West last season.
Portland’s back court has proven to be very, very good, but the rest of the West would like to have a word. There are a handful of duos that rank higher than Lillard and McCollum on the totem pole — like LeBron James and Anthony Davis, Paul George and Kawhi Leonard, Russell Westbrook and James Harden, and Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson. The Utah Jazz trio of Mike Conley, Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert will be hellacious on a nightly basis, and Mavericks fans will tell you a healthy Kristaps Porzingis and Year 2 Luka Doncic will make Dallas a playoff team.
In an era of basketball that has become defined by championships, the Trail Blazers have kept together a duo that may never win one. And maybe, just maybe, that’s perfectly fine. The West is overloaded, but Portland has chosen its path, and it’s a smart one. Marquee free agents don’t sign in small markets. The Pacers, for example, have been a well-run organization, but they couldn’t get a free agency meeting with Tier 2 stars in Tobias Harris or Khris Middleton. Instead, they gave Malcolm Brogdon a four-year, $80 million deal, and he projects to be one of the best free agents they’ve ever signed, right alongside David West and Bojan Bogdanovic.
The Trail Blazers refuse to leave their future to chance. They know what they have in Lillard and McCollum, and that’s two of the toughest-to-guard scorers in the NBA. Portland has five years to figure out the pieces that work well around them, in an NBA that’s wide open. And if they fall short, so be it. The Trail Blazers will compete at a high level and give their fans something to be proud of. Remember: That’s part of what attracted Durant, Kyrie Irving and DeAndre Jordan to Brooklyn this summer.