Portland Trail Blazers Should Consider Rebuilding With a Different Core

This season has not gone according to plan at all for the Portland Trail Blazers. Many fans, myself included, were expecting a healthy Portland team to win around 55-plus games this season and reach the Western Conference Finals.

What has happened is that the situation has gotten worse in Portland. Now our franchise player and franchise center are both out with knee injuries.

Brandon Roy has tried playing with the injury but the results have been anything but good. The franchise player and three-time All-Star is averaging career lows in points, minutes, field goal percentage, assists and rebounds.

We cannot rely on him to miraculously recover from his chronic knee issues and start playing at an All-Star level again. His defense has been really bad whenever he has been in the game. He is a complete liability on that end.

To make matters worse, he has also called out his teammates playing badly after a loss in which he shot 4-for-16 from the field. This is really bad for team chemistry. We cannot be a force in the West with the team, as it is currently.

Too many teams have been improving while we have nosedived and might be overtaken by the Grizzlies if we don't make a move pretty soon.

My solution for the bad play is that we change our core of players. Let's face it, at least two of our rotation players are out because of injury in every single game.

We cannot rely on this type of group to deliver a championship or deep playoff run. The only consistently healthy players on the team have been Andre Miller, LaMarcus Aldridge and Wesley Matthews.

Andre Miller could be considered as a core player on a team planning to win immediately, but as the situation currently is in Portland, I don't think we should get our hopes up too much.

Who Should the New Core Players Be?

LaMarcus Aldridge and Wesley Matthews. Everyone else on the roster should be movable if needed.

I was tempted to put Nicolas Batum on here as well, but he is probably more valuable in a trade right now.

His defense is good but we could obviously use more offense as we have seen so far this season.

Wesley Matthews is a great player to have in your core because he hustles, plays defense and has been pretty consistent putting up 20-point games so far this season. Let's not forget, he comes very cheap for the next five years!

LaMarcus Aldridge is on here because he has already signed an extension with the team and is pretty consistent with his scoring but could get better with his defensive rebounding. Not to mention every good team needs a reliable low-post player. 

Do the Trail Blazers Make a Trade for Another Core Player?

I really do think that the Trail Blazers need to make a big trade before the trade deadline this season. The team needs to upgrade if they want to win more games and make the playoffs.

Rich Cho should target a scoring small forward. We already seem to be set at SG and PF with Aldridge and Matthews. 

I think we should give Greg Oden just one more year to prove himself.

As for a point guard, we could go after Aaron Brooks in free agency since the Rockets are not going to be offering any extensions to players before the new bargaining agreement sets in.

I'm not going to go all out and say we should get Carmelo Anthony because that's just a pipe dream.

Players we could target are Paul George or Andre Iguodala.

Paul George has not been able to show his game playing behind Granger in Indiana. He is a really good scorer so he can help the Blazers out with their terrible offense so far this year.

Andre Iguodala isn't the most explosive scorer in the league but he is really valuable with his versatility and perimeter defense. Batum is also a great defender, but I just feel that Iguodala would be an upgrade over him right now.

What Should They Do with Brandon Roy?

So far this season, the Trail Blazers are 10-13 when Brandon Roy plays and 4-2 when he doesn't.

He gives them offensive help but his knees have really rendered him useless on defense. I think that there are three options for the Trail Blazers.

They have to either make him sit out some games until he feels better, trade him to another team or make him their sixth man.

Bringing Roy off the bench will enable the Trail Blazers to have some offensive punch off the bench when their starters are struggling. Not only that, but the starters will be better defensively since it will give Nate the opportunity to start Matthews and Batum together.

These are my solutions to the problems that the Trail Blazers are having this season. The ideas might not appeal to some of you, so I would love to hear your opinion on what the team should do.