Trail Blazers’ general manager Joe Cronin sat down with Mark Medina of NBA.com and provided some hints as to what the franchise might do near the February 10th trade deadline. The team obviously sits in a precarious position, sporting a 21-31 record with a few winning streaks under their belt and Damian Lillard sidelined with a season ending abdominal injury, this would seem like a perfect time for any team to look towards a complete rebuild.
Apparently that plan is not in the immediate future, says Cronin.
“We’re looking at all different scenarios. Reset is a big word. We’re too competitive to want to do that. So it depends on what you mean by reset,” Cronin told Medina. The interviewer followed up by clarifying “reset” to mean a long term rebuild. “No, I don’t think we have the appetite to tear it all the way down. We have too many good players and too many ways to get better without taking too big of a step back,” Cronin responded.
Depending on who you speak with, this is either frightening or encouraging. The former would say this Trail Blazers’ roster is flawed. There are too many guards with no defensive ability and Jusuf Nurkic, though playing well at the moment, is far too inconsistent to rely on as a third scoring option.
The latter would argue that Portland lacks depth due to injury and the coronavirus and the organization needs to be patient with Chauncey Billups and let his system acclimate to the roster. Plus, Damian Lillard has essentially been playing hurt the past 3-4 seasons.
There’s merit to either argument, but time is running out in the short term for Portland to make moves. The trade deadline is next week and there seems to be no appetite to move CJ McCollum for more assets. It will be interesting to see how the first year GM handles this test.
