Season review: The unrealistic Trail Blazers?

The Trail Blazers missed the playoffs for the fourth consecutive season. The team announced in advance that they would renew their contracts with general manager Cronin and head coach Billups before the end of the season. In addition, they remained silent in the trading market in the middle of the season. It can basically be said that the Trail Blazers have no changes in the lineup this season. This lineup is likely to last until next season, and even in the next few years.

But is such a bad choice really good?

As a general manager of the emergency takeover of the team, Joe Cronin has a relatively conservative management style and is not an aggressive expansionist manager. He doesn't have that kind of shocking and unexpected move, and reporters rarely exaggerated remarks or actions during interviews.

As a senior pioneer employee who has gone from grassroots employees to high-level positions, he chose to increase the department's large number of staff. Compared with the former general manager Olsch, who always takes credit for himself, Cronin's decision-making choices are obviously more valuable for the team's long-term development.

Looking back at the past few years, the Trail Blazers have added a Development League team, with the original team deputy general manager Oliva as the head coach, and an overseas scouting department, and Schmitz, the team's vice president of personnel, personally responsible for related matters. Compared with the team's choice on the table, Cronin and the team contributed significantly more to the table, and these are difficult to bring direct results at the moment.

And at the team level, except for the big sale to avoid taxes in the early days of taking office, Cronin's trading in recent years is not eye-catching. In the framework model of patience, giving young players enough opportunities to make mistakes, such a starting point is naturally conducive to long-term development.

But from some perspectives, although we are not eager to achieve success, the Trail Blazers under Cronin's rule in the past two years seem to have become a bit too negative in trading. For some contracts that are obviously not on the team's future time trajectory, there is no choice to clean up in time, the reason given by the team's senior management is to wait for the best trading opportunity to appear.

But two years have passed, and the so-called ideal trading opportunity mentioned by the Trail Blazers has never come. These contracts that have dragged the team are even about to expire. What is more serious is that players such as Grant have affected the team's status due to the gradual rise of young players, and have gradually changed from immediate combat power to the team's negative assets.

Although it is too early to draw conclusions early, as the Trail Blazers gradually find young backbones to the team's reconstruction route and the main line of the system is gradually established, the team's situation of dealing with inappropriate players should become increasingly clear, but Cronin still chose to stand still, and this decision is still a little difficult to understand.

Even this offseason, it is very likely that the Trail Blazers will be the critical window period for Cronin to have the last remaining strength to trade. Will he take action? At present, it is still questionable. In addition to the general manager of the team, before the last game of the season started, the Trail Blazers announced that they had reached a contract renewal agreement with head coach Billups, and the next contract will be fulfilled until the 2027-28 season.

Judging from the performance of Billups coaching the team, in terms of team cohesion, Billups does have the ability to revitalize the team: whether the record is good or bad or not, in recent years, the Trail Blazers have always maintained high fighting spirit to face every game.

As a player-type coach, Billups' advantage lies in understanding the players. While he can point out the players' shortcomings, he still lets them work hard for the team. As a Hall of Fame-level star, Billups does know the players better than many tactical master coaches. Although there are certain coaching advantages, this choice still confuses many fans. For a coach with a career winning rate of only 35.7%, is it really worth renewing his contract and staying in the team?

Although the Trail Blazers do not have any record pressure at the moment, the Trail Blazers led by Billups have been in the trouble of offensive disorder and lack of problem system and strategy in recent years. Focusing on the concept of sharing more balls and increasing on-field space, the idea seems to be close to modern basketball concepts, but from a realistic perspective, with limited tactical design capabilities, the reality is often the same pick-and-roll cover, and the decision-making ability of the ball holder is extremely dependent on the ball-holder's decision-making ability to deal with offense and defense.

But most of the Trail Blazers team are young players, which also creates a chaotic situation where headless flies often play on the court. It seems that everyone has the ball to play, but in fact, once the opponent's defense intensity is slightly improved, the game scene can only become their own inefficient singles.

Of course, to be fair, the Trail Blazers have made steady progress in offensive and defensive discipline and game content this season, but it may be difficult for fans to accept such assumptions under this style of play-offs or even playoffs.

What makes many veteran fans feel helpless is that even if the Trail Blazers were not a long-term favorite to compete for the championship, they were at least stable in the Western Conference playoff level under the leadership of the double gun. In addition to players, another part of the reason why the team can maintain a constant victory is that the team has a team boss who is enough to maintain love.

Tracing the origin, the current Trail Blazers are no longer the business model that Paul Allen was eager to make progress back then. After the death of his former boss, the team was managed and operated by his sister Judy Allen as the team chairman. Referring to the operating style of Judy's team in recent years, it is hard to think that the Trail Blazers are a team with the first goal of winning the championship, and it is more like a target carrier for financial investment.

From the team's perspective, maybe it's not that this team is not flexible, but that they don't want to change at the moment. Apart from personal love, since we can maintain a stable situation between each other, why is there still a need to move around?

General Manager Cronin can play steadily in team affairs, head coach Billups can coordinate the relationship between the upper and lower levels, and everything seems to be so harmonious, which is already a beautiful enough situation.

As a comparison, Nuggets coach Malone was tragically dismissed this season, and many fans stood up to this. According to the subsequent content revealed by reporters, Malone's dismissal was mainly due to the internal conflicts between him and general manager Calvin Booth; on the other hand, the reason why coach Billups was able to renew his contract was to some extent due to his harmonious connection with the team.

While peace is not perfectly appropriate, chaos is absolutely wrong.