Where Trail Blazers Stand Ahead of 2024 NBA Draft

When I wrote this week-of-the-draft reset column last June, I called the leadup to the Trail Blazers’ 2023 draft “among the most important 48 hours in franchise history.”

The decision general manager Joe Cronin faced a year ago—selecting Scoot Henderson or Brandon Miller with the No. 3 overall pick or trading it for win-now help—was going to determine whether their plans over the coming half-decade would include Damian Lillard or not.

This year, the stakes are just a bit lower. The path has already been chosen following last summer’s Lillard trade and the Blazers, coming off their worst season in nearly 20 years, are firmly in rebuild mode now. In all likelihood, they’re several years away from being a playoff team again. They don’t yet know who the next face of the franchise will be—Henderson, Shaedon Sharpe, whoever they draft with the seventh pick on Wednesday, ideally Cooper Flagg a year from now, or someone else—and their record next season is going to be similar to their 21-61 showing last year.

Still, it’s an important draft for the Blazers. They have two picks in the lottery (No. 7 and No. 14) and two in the second round (No. 34 and No. 40). They have several veterans who could be trade candidates either this week or in the coming month as free agency gets underway. Even at the top, it’s not a draft viewed as franchise-changing, but there are plenty of players (many of whom the Blazers have brought in for in-person workouts over the last month) that are projected to be good rotation players.

I haven’t written too much on a lot of the predraft rumor-mill stuff that’s cropped up recently. Earlier this month, I covered how all-over-the-place the mock drafts have been. Trade and offseason targets for teams, not just Portland but across the league, are the subject of constant misinformation, both intentional and not. Most of it isn’t even worth the time to dismiss. It’s also important to note that tonight’s insane Mikal Bridges-to-the-Knicks trade came out of left field without any whisper of the talks leaking out beforehand. The deals that actually get done usually happen like that. Remember that when you read these trade rumors.

But heading into draft day, it’s worth laying out what I’ve been able to gather about the Blazers’ plans—what’s real and what’s smoke.

The No. 7 overall pick

There are four names I’d circle as the players Portland is most seriously interested in with the first of their two lottery picks: UConn center Donovan Clingan and a trio of wings, Colorado’s Cody Williams, Tennessee’s Dalton Knecht and Frenchman Tidjane Salaun.

The Clingan-to-Blazers chatter has picked up significantly in recent weeks. I don’t think it’s a smokescreen. He has one elite skill—rim protection—that should translate easily from college to the NBA level and just so happens to be one of Portland’s biggest needs. Opponents shot 70.8 percent at the rim against them last season per Cleaning the Glass, the second-worst mark in the league behind Washington. Clingan would help immediately on that front.

He is, however, a completely different kind of big than their other centers and doesn’t have much of a perimeter game. He isn’t a mid-range threat like Deandre Ayton or a pick-and-pop weapon like Duop Reath, and his lack of speed makes him a questionable fit with Henderson and Sharpe. It’s not a perfect fit, but the Blazers’ “core” isn’t established enough to worry about fit over talent, so if they think he’s the best player on the board, the logic is there to take him.

It’s not a guarantee that Clingan will be an option. Plenty of people in the league think he has a real shot to go first overall to Atlanta and if he doesn’t, there are teams like Memphis that are known to want him badly and are interested in moving up into the top three to take him. Houston is very open to trading the third pick, and teams they’ve talked with about it are primarily interested in targeting Clingan.

From what I’ve heard, talks the Blazers have had about moving up higher than seventh in the draft have been more out of due diligence than anything they’re seriously considering doing. If Clingan is somehow there at No. 7, he’s who I think they’ll take, but I don’t expect them to be as aggressive as other middle-of-the-lottery teams he’s been linked to in making efforts to move up. If he’s off the board, they have other options they’d be happy with by just staying where they are.

Two of those options, Williams and Salaun, are long, athletic wings that from the start have fit this front office’s preferred archetype of prospect. Since the day of the lottery, Williams has made the most sense to me as the pick at seven, sitting right in the sweet spot of positional need and long-term upside. Salaun may be further away and a bigger question mark but many of the same physical gifts could make him too tantalizing to pass up for a front office that loves to swing on these kinds of prospects. Both of them worked out in Portland and I heard both were impressive. Neither one will be there at 14.

Knecht is worth keeping an eye on at No. 7, too. He’s older than Williams or Salaun and has far less defensive upside, but he’s a more fully-formed offensive player and the Blazers need shooting badly. He’ll be better as a day-one NBA player than either of them and still has room to grow, but his ceiling is significantly lower.

This is a similar type of decision to the one Cronin faced in his first draft in charge, in 2022, when the Blazers also held the seventh pick. There were some in the front office at the time who felt Sharpe was the most talented player in the draft and were willing to roll the dice on star potential despite having barely seen him play when he sat out his freshman season at Kentucky; others leaned towards Dyson Daniels, who was seen as more of a plug-and-play contributor. They ultimately took Sharpe.

This time around, Williams or Salaun would be the home-run swings with longer development curves and Knecht would be the high-floor known commodity who can be a productive player at the NBA level immediately. Two years ago, they went with the upside play. It remains to be seen if they’ll do that again this time around or make the safer pick.

This early in a rebuild without a sure-thing franchise centerpiece in place, I’d personally lean towards the former approach, but these decisions are above my pay grade.

The No. 14 overall pick

Similarly to the seventh pick, there are four players at this spot that I’d call their primary targets: two forwards, Miami’s Kyshawn George and Colorado’s Tristan da Silva, and two bigs, Indiana’s Kel’el Ware and Purdue’s Zach Edey.

For many of the same reasons Clingan wouldn’t be my first choice at No. 7 if I was the one making the pick, I don’t love the fit of a big as slow as Edey with the high-octane backcourt they’re building around. I also don’t know if someone that projects long-term as a backup center is the best use of a lottery pick. But I do know they came away impressed with his performance in the group workout earlier this month, so he can’t be completely dismissed as a possibility at 14 if they don’t get Clingan with their first lottery pick.

If they’re going to take a big, the more athletic and versatile Ware might make more sense with the personnel they have. George didn’t put up big numbers in his freshman season at Miami but has impressed in workouts and has upside as a playmaking wing. Da Silva, who worked out in Portland each of the past two draft cycles, doesn’t have the athleticism this regime usually likes, but he’s seen as one of the surer bets to be a good NBA rotation player right away. Call him the Jaime Jaquez Jr. of this draft.

The second round

The Blazers have two picks early in the second round, No. 34 and No. 40. It remains to be seen whether they’ll use both of them. It could come down to how many roster spots they have open, which isn’t many as of now, but if they move out multiple veterans (more on that in a minute), that could make it more feasible.

This front-office regime, however you feel about them, has been objectively great at identifying players late in the draft. Jabari Walker, the No. 57 overall pick in the 2022 draft, is a regular rotation player. The organization is still very high on Rayan Rupert. And Toumani Camara wasn’t their own draft pick, but he came over from Phoenix in the Lillard trade late in the summer and started over half the season as a rookie. In a draft where evaluations are as spread-out around the league as they are, it could be tempting to try to find two more hidden gems of that variety.

At a certain point, though, you run the risk of becoming Oklahoma City with Tre Mann and Vasilije Micic or Memphis with De’Anthony Melton, where you’re so good at finding talent on the fringes that you’re forced to give up on good players too early because you don’t have enough roster spots, minutes or money for all of them. There are worse problems to have, but this is a team that was in a position last year to play a starting lineup of five rookies who are all actually a part of their future plans. Is adding four more to the mix really the smartest thing to do? Someone will have to get squeezed out eventually.

A variable here is that the Blazers will likely have multiple two-way contract spots open in addition to their regular 15-man roster. I’m still expecting Ibou Badji to be back and take up one of those three spots, but the other two could be up for grabs and if the Blazers get indications that more than one player they like in the second round is open to signing a two-way, they could use both of their picks and have them on the roster that way. In the second round, which doesn’t come with a guaranteed contract offer, teams usually already have some confirmation from a player’s agent of whether their client would be open to signing a two-way or not. That’s why you see so many training-camp contracts, two-way deals and Summer League invites go out immediately following the draft: some agents tell teams not to draft their player if they think they can land a more favorable situation on the undrafted free agent market.

Players the Blazers have worked out in the past month that are projected to go in the second round include UCLA center Adem Bona, Weber State guard Dillon Jones, Virginia guard Ryan Dunn, French wing Melvin Ajinca and Serbian forward Nikola Djurisic.

Trade possibilities

Whether it’s this week or around the start of free agency, the Blazers have to make some trades. They have too many spots filled and their roster is currently too expensive for it to be feasible to stand pat. For clarity’s sake, it would be ideal to move off at least one of their high-priced veterans before or during the draft.

That list starts with Malcolm Brogdon, who is going into the final year of his contract. There’s virtually no way Brogdon can still be in Portland coming out of the next two weeks. His locker-room presence was valuable on a young team, particularly as Henderson learned the ropes in the NBA, and he said all the right things about embracing a mentoring role. But he’s still good enough that he can help a contender who needs a solid veteran guard more than he’ll help a Blazers team in this stage of a rebuild, and they need to cut salary somewhere.

Anfernee Simons and Jerami Grant are in similar positions: they don’t have to move either one right now like they do Brogdon, but they shouldn’t be closed off to it in either case if they get an offer good enough. The Blazers still love both of them, but the reality of where they are in their careers and where the franchise is in their rebuild makes them obvious trade candidates. They should have value to good teams and Portland should be able to get good returns for both of them if they choose to move them.

Last week’s Chicago-Oklahoma City deal, in a weird way, could serve as a blueprint for the kind of deal that makes sense for either Grant or Simons. The idea of that kind of trade—prioritizing a young player still on his rookie contract that you think can develop into a cornerstone—makes sense. I personally wouldn’t have made that bet on Josh Giddey, for a variety of reasons, but if a front office believes in someone in that age range enough, it’s perfectly defensible to seek that in a return for a player like Grant or Simons over pure volume of draft picks.

If they do come out of the first round with a center—be it Clingan, Edey, Ware or someone else—it will be interesting to see the domino effect that has on their plans for their other centers. If they can get any kind of positive value for Robert Williams III, it would probably make sense to do it rather than wait for him to rehabilitate his value and risk him getting injured again in the process. I’ve heard his recovery is going well and he’s expected to be ready to go for training camp. But he’s had major surgeries now on both knees and will have to have his health managed for the rest of his career. As good as he is when he’s healthy, that’s too big a question mark for the Blazers to count on long-term.

I don’t think the Blazers are actively looking to move off of Ayton, even if they take a center in the first round. After a shaky start to the season, he turned a corner after the All-Star break and was consistently productive. He has two years left on his contract, so they will eventually have to make a decision about whether he’s their long-term starting center, but they’re comfortable moving forward with him for now.