2024 NBA Draft, Round 1: Trail Blazers Add Two Good Basketball Players

📍 TUALATIN, Ore. — The Trail Blazers entered the first round of what is now a two-night NBA Draft with two lottery picks. They came out of it with two good basketball players, one in the draft and one in a trade they agreed to an hour before the festivities started.

Wednesday night wasn’t the fork-in-the-road moment for the franchise that last year’s draft was. Getting Scoot Henderson at the No. 3 overall pick was viewed as a win but didn’t feel like one in the building, in the moment, because of what it would inevitably mean for Damian Lillard’s future. Things were a lot lighter this year.

The biggest moments of the rebuild are still ahead—drafting whoever the No. 1 centerpiece is. Maybe that will be Cooper Flagg or Ace Bailey a year from now, if their lottery luck is better than it was this year. But Joe Cronin got a few things done on Wednesday that were important to get done.

Draft the best player on the board? Check. Donovan Clingan was at one point rumored to go No. 1 overall to Atlanta, and teams behind the Blazers in the lottery were talking to Houston, Detroit and Charlotte about jumping up to get him. Clingan’s high-end upside isn’t as high as some of the home-run swings in the top 10, but one of the most dominant rim protectors in recent college basketball history is very easy to project as a quality starter in the NBA. You know what he is and there’s very little chance he fails.

Cronin wouldn’t say exactly where Clingan ranked on their board because he didn’t want to put added pressure on him. That’s a heavy hint that he may have been in their top two.

“We had him higher than we took him,” Cronin said.

Clear up some of the financial strain? Check. The trade that sent Malcolm Brogdon and the No. 14 pick (plus a few marginal future picks) to Washington for Deni Avdija cut about $10 million from next year’s payroll and got them below the luxury-tax line. They were never going to go into the season over that threshold, but getting the hurdle out of the way now makes the rest of the offseason that much simpler.

Clear up the logjam in the backcourt? Check. As I wrote last night, and at several other points since the season ended, moving Brogdon this offseason was an absolute necessity, not only for financial reasons but to fully open the runway for the young guards they’re building around.

By the way, on the subject of the backcourt, in Cronin’s post-draft press conference, he was asked about the next steps of the offseason beyond tomorrow’s second round, and he said:

“We’ve got to continue to build this talent base. We’re committed to Scoot and Shaedon being a massive part of what we’re doing. How do we find ways to give them the support they need and make them better and maximize their development? Continually seeking players to add to this roster that we can grow with and build with.”

Mentioning Scoot Henderson and Shaedon Sharpe, and not Anfernee Simons, was eyebrow-raising even in the moment. I’ve thought since the end of the season that it’s made sense to at least explore moving Simons, along with Jerami Grant and Matisse Thybulle, this summer. Maybe Cronin didn’t mean for that to come out the way it did, but it didn’t go unnoticed.

And on the subject of “seeking players to add to this roster that we can grow with and build with,” swapping Brogdon for the 23-year-old Avdija, who is 6-foot-9 and a plus defender who shot a career-best 37.4 percent from three-point range last season, is exactly the kind of move Cronin has been hoping for whenever he’s fielded offers for the Blazers’ veterans. Even with the far-out future picks they gave up, Avdija is better than anyone they would have drafted with the 14th pick, young enough to be on the Henderson-Sharpe-Clingan timeline while fitting positionally with them, and on one of the most team-friendly deals in the league.

(Cronin was unable to discuss the trade for Avdija on Wednesday because it hasn’t been made official with the league office yet.)

The question of Clingan’s fit on a team that already has Deandre Ayton and (theoretically, if he’s healthy) Robert Williams III is one Cronin largely sidestepped when I asked him about it.

“We’re still in such a talent-acquisition mode that we’re not really as concerned with who’s playing ahead of who,” he said. “Part of this is, we want to build a competitive culture. We want these guys to come in and compete and earn whatever minutes and roles they get. When you’re a rebuilding team like we are, and you’re trying to take that next step, you need guys that are capable of coming in and winning jobs.”

For those that pay attention to such things, Ayton commented “Yessir!!!!!🙌” on the Blazers’ Instagram post of the video of Clingan getting his name called by Adam Silver, so that competition is off to a good start.

Cronin still has work to do, starting with the second round on Thursday morning, and then figuring out which of the veterans are most important to trade. But he did well on Wednesday. The Blazers need good basketball players who fit their timeline and they came away with two of them. You can’t ask for much more than that.