How Dame Got Blazers to West Finals Without 'Riding Coattails' of Other Stars
Around the time Kevin Durant went on CJ McCollum's podcast last July and laughed at the notion that the Portland Trail Blazers could compete for a championship, it was just another boring offseason in the NBA's most northwestern outpost.
The Golden State Warriors were adding four-time All-Star DeMarcus Cousins to a team that was coming off of back-to-back championships, with back-to-back Finals MVP Durant and two-time league MVP Steph Curry. The Blazers? They were re-signing Jusuf Nurkic, trading for Gary Trent Jr. and signing the "other Curry," Seth, and Nik Stauskas to free-agent deals.
Ho-hum.
No wonder Durant couldn't stifle the chuckling when McCollum took issue on his "Pull Up" podcast with the rich getting richer as the Warriors added Cousins. If he'd known what was good for him, McCollum said, Cousins should've signed with the Blazers.
"You know you guys aren't going to win a championship," Durant said.
"Bro, we have the team," McCollum responded. "We have the capabilities. Anything is possible. We can win a championship."
"Let's be honest," Durant said. "I like y'all two [McCollum and Damian Lillard]. You're hard to stop, but come on."
This being the NBA in 2018-19, a Twitter war ensued. Now, 10 months later, the score will be settled on the court in the Western Conference Finals.
Pending Durant's recovery from the calf injury he suffered in the Western Conference Semifinals against the Rockets, he—the poster player for free-agent opportunism—will be the Warriors' focal point. The focal point for the Blazers will be Lillard, a superstar who seems content with where he is and satisfied elevating those around him—not perpetually seeking greener pastures.
"Damian wants to win because he's a competitor, and he wants to win based on his contribution—not riding other people's coattails," a person in the league who knows the four-time All-Star told Bleacher Report.
Whatever Durant thought of the Blazers' championship mettle back in July, one scout told B/R that the duo of Lillard and McCollum may be the only backcourt capable of playing Curry and Klay Thompson to a draw in a playoff series.
"They may not outplay them," the scout said. "But they're the last backcourt standing that could make it really tough on them."
The Blazers wouldn't have reached this pinnacle of their post-LaMarcus Aldridge rebuild without McCollum's 37-point masterpiece in Game 7 against the Nuggets. Nor would they have made it without Lillard's persistent brilliance...and patience.
While other teams in bigger markets have gone about collecting pairs and trios of stars, Lillard has been content to trust an organizational structure and plan that has put its faith in general manager Neil Olshey and coach Terry Stotts to build a championship contender around him—but do it a little differently.
"There's a real lack of patience and commitment around the league right now," a Western Conference general manager said. "People are always changing coaches and GMs. When you hit a bump in a road, the answer is always to fire everyone and look for solutions outside."
As Aldridge jumped from the Blazers to the Spurs for a four-year, $80 million deal in 2015, Portland's big free-agent splash was…signing Al-Farouq Aminu, a reclamation project once drafted by Olshey with the Clippers, and trading for Moe Harkless, a sometime starter in Orlando who had yet to emerge with the Magic. Unfazed, Lillard was the first to call Harkless, welcome him to Portland and invite him to his home, a person familiar with the situation said.
The following summer, the Warriors took advantage of the salary cap spike to add Durant to a team coming off a 73-win season. The Blazers' answer? Evan Turner.
(Just as important, the Blazers also signed Lillard and McCollum to extensions in 2015 and '16, respectively.)
Portland made the playoffs in those first two seasons without Aldridge and then climbed to 49 wins in 2017-18—but got swept by New Orleans for a second straight first-round exit. Frustration started to mount for Lillard, said the person in the league who knows him. But both he and the organization decided the best course of action was to stay the course.
"Where Damian's patience pays off is, he realizes how hard it is to get people to come to Portland," the person close to Lillard said. "But once they get them there, they can keep them."
The moves that propelled the Blazers toward this moment also came with little fanfare. At the 2017 trade deadline, Olshey acquired Nurkic and a first-round pick from Denver in exchange for Mason Plumlee, a second-round pick and cash. The Blazers re-signed Nurkic this past summer. Portland had the third-best record in the Western Conference after Golden State and Houston from the day they acquired Nurkic until he suffered a season-ending leg injury on March 25, according to the Blazers.
This season, they did two things that would've been unthinkable just a few years ago. First, they persuaded Rodney Hood to give up his valuable Bird rights as part of a trade with the Cleveland Cavaliers at the February deadline. (Hood, of course, famously hit the game-winner in the Blazers' four-overtime victory over Denver in Game 3 of the second round.)
Then, they landed sought-after center Enes Kanter on the buyout market, fortifying the paint for a playoff push without Nurkic.
"By Year 7, you have established consistency and built the credibility necessary for people to understand and appreciate your culture," Olshey, hired in 2012, told B/R. "It takes time to build a body of work on an organizational level that breeds confidence and trust in the marketplace among agents and players."
Olshey built a winning foundation the same way the Warriors did: through the draft. The key chesspiece was Lillard, picked sixth overall, out of Weber State, in Olshey's first draft with the Blazers in 2012. His star backcourt was complete when Olshey picked McCollum 10th overall, out of Lehigh, the following year.
The Warriors were built through the draft, too, with Curry, Thompson and Draymond Green forming the foundation of a team that has won three championships in four years. The key difference, of course, is that while the Warriors possess the big-market glamour and money to land prize free agents like Durant and Cousins, the Blazers have to hit singles in the NBA transaction game—not home runs.
Those hits have started to add up. And Lillard's patience has paid off...all the way to a date with Durant and the Warriors in the conference finals.
"Damian doesn't have that intrinsic sense of entitlement that comes with being a McDonald's All-American and AAU guys giving you money and sneakers," the person who knows him said. "That's not who Damian is."
Who he is, right now, is the face of a franchise that has been built carefully and without much fanfare, but also one that has a shot at the Warriors…and a chance to prove Durant's dismissal of his Trail Blazers dead wrong.
Ken Berger covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter, @KBergNBA.
Former front office executive Wes Wilcox joins Howard Beck to discuss John Beilein's hiring in Cleveland, what the Rockets do now, Philly's difficult summer and whether the Celtics and Kyrie Irving need each other. All of that and more on The Full 48.
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