This is part of a four part series on the Trail Blazers 2025 offseason. You can read all the previously published and future parts via the links below.
Part 1 (You are Here) – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4
It’s September again, which means it’s raining again, which means summer is over.
It’s been a nice run, enjoying the Timbers scrap their way to a playoff berth, and I’m keen to watch some more Arsenal in the English Premier League through the cooler months, but there’s only one team that I can profess to write about with any sense: the Portland Trail Blazers.
I only stopped last season for two reasons. One, a new job that gobbled up half my days for writing; and two, because I felt everything that needed to be said about the 2024-25 season as a fan experience was summed up nicely in my last post of that season.
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“This is how a basketball team grows,” as I remarked, turned out to detail a win streak that became a kernel of evidence for a promising core and a vision for success to eyes both in and outside the organization. It probably gave general manager Joe Cronin and company enough confidence to endeavor as they did this offseason and it’s why the waves resounding from the moves above them do not give me much pause.
But let’s start at the micro level before we go much further. Particularly player movement. Oh look, a chart!
| In: | Out: |
| Yang Hansen (Draft) Jrue Holiday (Trade) Damian Lillard (Free Agent) Caleb Love (Free Agent) Blake Wesley (Free Agent) | Anfernee Simons (Trade) Deandre Ayton (Free Agent) Jabari Walker (Free Agent) Dalano Banton (Free Agent) |
When Anfernee Simons was traded, I was first struck by a chord of particular sadness. That was it. The last member of the most successful Portland Trail Blazers team in my adult life had finally departed. Without Simons exploding on the Sacramento Kings for the last game of 2018-19 season, the Trail Blazers would not have matched up against the last ride of the Russell Westbrook-led Oklahoma City Thunder. There would have been likely no “Bad Shot,” no “Blocked by McCollum!” against the Denver Nuggets and certainly no Western Conference Finals appearance, sweep or otherwise.
Watching his career was truly special; he became a lethally sharpshooter and yet won the NBA’s All-Star Dunk Contest, the only Trail Blazer to do so. And for better or worse, the man still tried to be the offensive engine of a team when he was the only working cylinder left firing. There might never be another player that can reach the scorching hot temperature of an Anferno Simons three-point barrage.
And in return for this career, Portland received Jrue Holiday from the Boston Celtics.
Much aside from some hilarious commentary that will be addressed later, this was about as good a player as the Trail Blazers could have received for Simons.
Despite his last year being a down one statistically and from the eye test to be sure1, and he has his issues, being 35 years old and being owed $32, $35 and $37 million over the next three years (give or take a couple hundred thousand grand), which makes calculating the future contracts of Scoot Henderson, Shaedon Sharpe and Toumani Camara slightly more complicated, but the resume speaks for itself.
Two time champion, two time Olympic gold medalist, multiple time all-defensive team, able to play both guard positions, able to make a health clip of three pointers. And the Blazers receive all of that for one Anfernee Simons. Get out of here, you make that trade whenever possible, even with the issues.
Strengthen the strength, I say. Bet on the fact that the Blazers will struggle to break the century mark and so will their opponents. It’s kind of refreshing, given the past history of the Trail Blazers’ play style as a shoot-first, defend-never franchise, cap space be damned.
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