What the future of the Blazers looks like after draft, start of free agency

The NBA draft started last week, and free agency just began. For the Blazers and their fans, some new faces will hit the court, and others will say goodbye. Yang Hansen, a 7-foot-1 center from China, is the Blazers’ newest rookie and was No. 16 in the overall draft.

The Blazers also recently parted ways with center Deandre Ayton after a slew of “bad ways,” including tardiness, tantrums and skipping rehabilitation appointments, as first reported in The Athletic.

Mike Richman is the host of the “Locked on Blazers” podcast. He joins us to share more on what to expect from Rip City’s beloved team after this player shake-up.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller:  This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. It’s only been nine days since the NBA season finally ended with the NBA Finals, but the Portland Trail Blazers have already made some major changes to their lineup. Some veterans have been traded away or let go, and a young center was acquired in the draft. My next guest says that all of these changes have brought much needed clarity to the Blazers lineup, but not necessarily excellence. Mike Richman is the host of the daily “Locked On Blazers” podcast. Mike, welcome back.

Mike Richman:  Thanks for having me.

Miller:  All right, so as I mentioned, your big takeaway from the last few weeks is the Blazers have finally given us roster clarity, if not necessarily roster excellence. Let’s take these one by one. What was the roster confusion that they had been mired in for a couple years now?

Richman:  They had tried to pivot away, or they had pivoted away from the Damian Lillard era with a mixture of older experienced veterans as well as recent draft picks who were under 22 years old. The balance of whether they are truly committed to these youngsters or they’re doing something else with a slightly older team, I think the sort of push and pull of those two directions left a little bit of confusion about exactly where they were headed and why.

Miller:  How did they go from confusion to clarity in just a week?

Richman:  A lot of big decisions. One of the first moves that they made was to trade away Anfernee Simons, the Blazers’ longest tenured player who’d played his first seven seasons with the Trail Blazers. They sent him to Boston – in a trade that I don’t believe is official yet, but it has been reported by several places – in exchange for Jrue Holiday, eight years older than Anfernee Simons and making more money. So that doesn’t seem to scream clarity, but as an on-court fit and a basketball player, Jrue Holiday probably allows them to play a little more reasonable connection, like in terms of basketball fit, with the young guards, Shaedon Sharpe and Scoot Henderson. So I think from a “who can play together cleanly” fit, that offers some clarity.

And then the second sort of seismic move they made was just sending Deandre Ayton home. This is a veteran center who they acquired in the Damian Lillard trade, who was up $35.5 million this year, and the Blazers basically paid to send him home. He gave back, reportedly, about $10 million of his salary to enter free agency. The Blazers said, “see you later,” in a commitment to their young centers who they’ve drafted in each of the past two drafts. So now they have, if not a good team, at least a team that makes a lot more sense and the direction seems at least clearer.

Miller:  Do you wish they’d made these changes or something like this last year?

Richman:  Absolutely, absolutely. I have been, on my podcast, whining about their lack of clarity and lack of direction for some 250 consecutive episodes. So now that they’ve finally committed to it, I’ll have to figure out something else to whine about.

Miller:  I appreciate that, but I’m curious, which departing player do you think you’ll miss the most as a fan, even as you’re celebrating that now we’ll all get a chance to see if this younger team is good? Who do you think you’re gonna miss most, just watching them play?

Richman:  I guess it’s Anfernee Simons. I was never really a Deandre believer or appreciator. He seems like an OK guy, but it wasn’t really my cup of tea. But Anfernee Simons was drafted out of high school. He didn’t go to college. He spent an extra year at prep school. He grew up from an 18-year-old kid, a young man to an adult, here in Portland. And I think it’s relatively rare in professional sports in North America these days to see someone spend that much time around the team. I think it was time for both parties to sort of move along with Simons and the Trail Blazers. But indeed, there’ll be something different about watching a team where he is not a big part of it.

Miller:  Can you tell us about the center from China that the Blazers picked in the draft?

Richman:  I can do my best. I can do my best. So they drafted Yang Hansen, who is a just turned 20-year-old, 7-foot Chinese center. This was, as described in The Athletic, one of the most surprising draft picks of the last decade. The general consensus was that Yang was going to be drafted in the second round, somewhere in the 30s or the 40s. And the Blazers traded back to take him at 16.

Miller:  Are they geniuses?

Richman:  I guess we’ll find out. This was their guy, right? This was the absolute player they wanted. They made a concerted effort to go get him. They reportedly were scouting him for two seasons and sending members of the front office to China to meet with him, see him up close, and get a unique look that no other team was gonna get with the level of data that they were collecting. This is either the type of move, called shot, non-consensus draft pick, that is either marks your excellence and your expertise, or the type of thing that gets you fired.

Miller:  There’s an amount of uncertainty in most draft picks. So every now and then, there are some phenoms, generational talents for whom there’s a kind of consensus that they’re going to be amazing – and they often are. But there’s some level of uncertainty for many young players. Are they gonna be good in the NBA with bigger, better talents? Is it fair to say that there’s even more uncertainty for Yang than for the average draftee?

Richman:  Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. One, he’s just young, he’s just turned 20. He’s making a massive leap in talent. The Chinese Basketball Association not only is one of the lower leagues internationally, it also has very specific rules about how many non-domestic players can play both at the same time and at the end of games. You can’t even play two Americans in the 4th quarter in the CBA. He will play many, many Americans and people from all over the world in the 4th quarter should he compete for the Trail Blazers, right? It’s such a massive leap for such a young player that there is a real unknown with him.

Typically, draft picks struggle right away. So I wouldn’t want to stamp it even in the next 12 months. But there is some pressure for the Blazers to get this right, just because of how far away from the consensus they went to make this pick.

Miller:  To go back to your main point, the Blazers have decluttered their roster but haven’t, all of a sudden, made it great. And it seems like we’re still looking at the same question that Blazers fans have been wondering for a couple years now. Are both or either of Shaedon Sharpe and Scoot Henderson going to become top-tier talents? What are you looking for in the next year? How are you going to be deciding that question in the year or more to come?

Richman:  It’s a big, big, big season for both those two young men. Shaedon Sharpe is eligible for a contract extension this summer. Before the Blazers even know whether he’s a really good player, they have an opportunity to give him really good player type money. He could sign a contract in the hundreds of millions of dollars range, which is quite a commitment. He looked good in his third NBA season, but he didn’t have the makings of the top 20-ish players in the league [with whom] you can win a championship or at least pursue one in earnest. And Scoot Henderson went from being a pretty darn bad rookie to a decent second-year player.

But the question isn’t whether these guys are pretty good. If the Blazers are going to get good, much of their hope to be like a true contender or at least a consistently very competitive team, hinges on these two young men taking a leap. Do they hit their peaks with consistency? That’s the question with all young players. And what do their peaks look like when they hit them? If they are good once a week, it’s not good enough. If they’re good four times a week, it becomes the question of how good is that good? Is it a capital G we’re talking about here? Because in the end, roster clarity gives you a chance to evaluate, but if the evaluation ends up with, “hey, we still didn’t get it right,” they’ll be back in a familiar spot fairly quickly.

Miller:  The biggest news of the day so far, NBA-wise, league-wide, but for Portlanders too, I think, is that Damian Lillard – who is still currently injured, arguably the most beloved player ever to put on a Blazers jersey, certainly for this generation – he was waived by the Milwaukee Bucks. They said goodbye. Is there any scenario in which he returns to Portland?

Richman:  Yes. The short answer to that is yes. There is a scenario. I can tell you, from conversations I’ve had with people who are close to Dame, he has thought about very earnestly since he’s been gone to Milwaukee over the last two years, about coming back, about finding a way to make a return here to play here. This is where he wants to be, his family still is. When he found out the news today that he was waived by the Bucks, he found out in Portland, Oregon, cause that’s where he lives in the offseason. This is home for him. You can go down to McMinnville and purchase yourself a vehicle.

Miller:   It’s a good place to be in the summer.

Richman:  Yeah, exactly. It’s wonderful, I think NBA players maybe don’t know that. Dame is a “trailblazer” in that sense as well. There’s a world where he comes back. The question is, did the moves they’ve made to provide this roster clarity and clean evaluation spaces for their young players, do those decisions they’ve made over the last, say, week, line up with a return for Damian Lillard? You have to ask that question. But certainly, I think he would be open to it. It’s just whether the team still sees that as a viable plan moving forward.

Miller:  But based on everything you said, isn’t there a relatively clear answer to that question? If the whole point here of these moves is roster clarity and let’s see how these young guards are, let’s give them time to be guards, how does it make sense to bring in a guard right now? It seems like it’s a question of love, affection and nostalgia, versus roster clarity and a future … or am I missing something?

Richman:  You are 100% correct, in my personal view. I think it makes no sense. I think they’ve reached a point where it truly doesn’t make any sense. But sports often don’t and perhaps the heart wins out here. And perhaps, maybe some lead decision makers say, “Hey, I think, as the team is up for sale, wouldn’t it be fun to have this building packed with people who love Damian Lillard again? Wouldn’t that make us more appealing?” I think there are some things that, in sports particularly, just operate outside of logic. But to me, we’re at a point where the logic of Damian Lillard no longer connects.

Miller:  But maybe the question, it’s not the logic isn’t simply about winning. I put that forward … if winning is the most important thing, then maybe it doesn’t make sense to have Lillard here. But if you care about Damian Lillard as a person, and as a symbol of basketball goodness and Blazerdom, even though he’s been a Buck for two years, then maybe it makes perfect sense and even if you acknowledge that winning isn’t everything.

Richman:  Absolutely. And also, I think you could make the argument that Damian Lillard would be the best guard on the roster when he shows up and is healthy in the ‘26 season. He’s out with an Achilles injury probably for most of next season. But you could make a case that he might be the best guard on the roster. So there is a basketball world where, if you think sort of emotionally and a narrow window, then yeah. But there are many things at play here.

Miller:  Mike, it is always a pleasure to talk to you. Thanks very much.

Richman:  Thanks, Dave. I appreciate it.

Miller:  Mike Richman is the host of “Locked on Blazers,” which puts out a Blazers’ podcast every single day.

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