![]() ![]() Hassan Whiteside was acquired via trade and gave the Blazers a terrific boost in 2019-20, but was a one-year stopgap with Jusuf Nurkic’s injury and wound up in Sacramento, where he languished this season. Harkless and free-agent signee Al-Farouq Aminu (four years, $30 million) were key components to the run to the 2019 West finals, but the next season they were gone, replaced by Mario Hezonja and Anthony Tolliver. Problem is, Olshey hasn’t been able to do much with it. Olshey’s philosophy in retaining Crabbe, Leonard and Harkless - with the approval of Paul Allen - was that under the Larry Bird Exception, it created much more room beyond the salary cap to sign future players. In one year, Portland went from the lowest payroll in the league to the second-highest. McCollum has been a valuable commodity, but at a price reserved for franchise players.ĭuring that unforgettable summer of 2016, Olshey matched Brooklyn’s offer sheet for Allen Crabbe (four years, $75 million) and signed free agents Evan Turner (four years, $70 million), Meyers Leonard (four years, $41 million), Moe Harkless (four years, $40 million) and even, for heaven’s sake, Festus Ezeli (two years, $15 million). CJ McCollum was signed at four years and $106 million, which combined with a 2019 extension calls for him to make $129 million over the four seasons ending in 2024. The other deals have proved suspect at best. (Due to an extension signed in 2019, Lillard’s contract value now sits at an average of $43 million - six years and $258 million, roughly equal to the gross national product of Luxembourg). Damian Lillard (five years, $153 million) was a bargain at any price. Olshey’s reference to the “past” was probably meant for 2016, when he committed a record half-billion dollars to the salaries of seven players. So give Olshey credit for his honesty on that subject, though it would seem he might be willing to share the blame for putting together an explosive, offense-oriented backcourt that has been undeniably a liability at the other end. For whatever reason, he was never able to field a strong enough defensive unit to become a formidable presence in the playoffs. 29 defensive ranking among the NBA’s 30 teams this regular season was typical of many of Stotts’ nine seasons at the helm. Let’s examine this before Stotts gets run over by the bus Olshey threw him under. “The feeling is, in this instance, while in the past there might have been questions (about Olshey’s job performance), the first-round loss and the defensive rating (29) was not a product of the roster.” To a query about how Olshey felt about his job security, he responded this way: Olshey was annoyed at some questions and dodged entirely a couple, but not those aimed at the reasoning behind the firing of Coach Terry Stotts. That’s not what the late Paul Allen had in mind when hiring a general manager. They have won a collective four playoff series, with no trips to the NBA Finals, and have been swept in the first round three times. The playoffs have been a different story. During the Olshey era, the Blazers hold a regular-season record of 402-318 - quite respectable. We’re one of the winningest small-market organizations in the league over the last nine years.” We made the conference finals two years ago. “We’ve advanced to the second round twice. “We’ve made the playoffs eight years in a row,” he said. On Monday, in case the assembled members of the Fourth Estate had not been paying attention, Olshey laid out his credentials through nine seasons in Portland. (Here is a link to a column I wrote for the Portland Tribune during a similar lecture to media types after the 2017-18 season.) Not only does Olshey not suffer fools gladly, he enjoys delivering a proverbial kick in the tush when he deems it necessary. That’s what he did during a Monday Zoom conference with local reporters, whose collective wisdom, he is quite sure, fits neatly on the head of a pin. Olshey has long been president of the Neil Olshey Fan Club, and when membership gets low, he does what he can to drum up the numbers. ![]() When the Trail Blazers’ president of basketball operations (general manager) believes the narrative about his team and the job he is doing is off-kilter, he’ll gather the scribes and set them straight. Neil Olshey conducts a press conference not so much to inform the media as to educate them. ![]()
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