MAILBAG: When Will Scoot Henderson Return to the Starting Lineup?

With one game remaining on their seven-game road trip, the Trail Blazers are four games out of 10th place in the Western Conference in their improbable push for the play-in.

Earlier this week, we did the first part of the latest mailbag while the team is out of town on the long road trip. You can read that below:

MAILBAG: Why Haven't the Trail Blazers Embraced the Tank?

As I write this, the Trail Blazers are past the midway point of their seven-game road trip and so far are 3-1 after an impressive showing in an overtime loss to the Cavaliers.

The Rose Garden Report

Here’s the rest of it, which covers Scoot Henderson’s role, Chauncey Billups’ future and other topics:

Scoot seems to have become a much more consistent player this season. Should we expect him to come off the bench for the remainder of the season, (barring injury), or can we expect him to start?

- Sam S.

If the Blazers’ season wasn’t going the way it’s going, I’d probably tell you that you could expect them to shut down Anfernee Simons at some point in the next couple weeks and let Henderson start the final month of the season.

But as long as they have a real shot at the play-in, why would they change anything about anyone’s role? What they’re doing right now is working. Once they’re mathematically eliminated from the postseason, maybe that changes.

Do you get the sense that Billups has coached his way into an extension? It seems like the players are responding well recently. If not, what up and coming coaches are seen around the league as ready to take the next step to HC?

- Peter G.

It’s pretty remarkable that the Blazers’ season—and Billups’ reputation—has reached the point that this is a real discussion, considering where things were just a couple of months ago.

It’s one of the more unusual situations I can remember, but it’s been an unusual situation for the past year.

One of the main reasons the Blazers brought Billups back after last season was that he had one more guaranteed year on his contract and it wouldn’t have made a lot of sense to pay multiple head coaches when the franchise’s goal for the season was to lose and get a high lottery pick.

Now that the Blazers have vastly outperformed expectations and are closer to the play-in than they are to any real shot at landing Cooper Flagg, the organization has three choices with Billups this summer:

• They could pick up his fifth-year option and make him coach as a lame duck for a second year in a row without any added long-term security and kick the can down the road again, which wouldn’t be fair to Billups or anyone else.
• They could sign him to a long-term extension and bank on him being the right coach for the long haul based on what’s happened the past two months. But if they thought he was, they could have picked up his option well before now and taken all the speculation off the table. And if they extended him and then underperformed next year, they’d be right back where they were at the beginning of the season.
• They could simply “mutually agree to part ways” at the end of the season when his contract expires, with both sides leaving on good terms and nobody getting “fired.” Billups has shown the NBA over the last two months that he’s grown as a coach and will probably get another job soon if he hits the market, and Joe Cronin will have the opportunity to hire his own head coach and hope it has an Ime Udoka/J.B. Bickerstaff-like effect next season. Nobody walks away looking bad.

Nothing is final until it’s final, but the last of those options is still, by far, what the smart money is on happening.

As for who the Blazers’ next coach may be—I do have some thoughts on that but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.

Clingan embodies the Marlo Stanfield phrase “big paws on that puppy” but his conditioning is a limiting factor.

Two lower body injuries this season would point to something not aligned within his posterior chain.

Have you heard specifics on what Clingan’s summer conditioning will be, and do you know if they’re going to work on his running gait/mechanics?

- Reed B.

I would push back on the idea that Clingan’s knee and ankle injuries this season are a result of any structural issues—they were both contact injuries, the kind that happen pretty routinely in a basketball game, and he’s been fine since he came back from both of them.

I’m not sure what exactly Clingan’s offseason will look like. It’s probably not out of the realm of possibility that he plays Summer League again, just to get more in-game reps, even if it’s only a couple of games. After the season I’m definitely going to ask people in the organization what exactly they’ll be working on with him.

I view this teams biggest need as shooting (specifically catch and shoot guys). How do you see the team addressing this need?

- JC W.

Some of it is internal development with guys like Scoot Henderson and Toumani Camara, who have become much more consistent shooters this season. But that’s definitely something they’d do well to look at in the draft, wherever their pick ends up.

Everyone talks about Cooper Flagg, Dylan Harper and Ace Bailey.... But in the event the Blazers don't strike gold in the lottery, are there other prospects expected to go a bit later in the draft that you know the front office is high on? Any mid to late lottery prospects that intrigue you personally?

- John

I’ll be honest: I don’t watch college basketball at all, so I’m the wrong person to ask about any prospects other than the three you mentioned. I usually start to dig into draft stuff after the season is over—especially a season like this one, where the games the Blazers are playing actually matter for the first time in a few years. I do know that the Blazers’ front office and scouting department are out on the road catching various college prospects at conference tournaments right now.