Portland Trail Blazers: Neil Olshey Goes Contrarian

I love nothing more than when a person acts as an outlier to a common practice in society. You know how everyone takes pictures nowadays just to show their peers what they are doing? I live to be friends with the person that takes pictures on a disposable camera just so they can look back on the memories themselves. These people are the contrarians in our society, and their knack for thinking differently keeps the rest of the population in check.

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For the sake of the basketball offseason, Portland Trail Blazers general manager Neil Olshey acted as steeply contrarian thinker is correspondence to the rest of the league. Allow me to explain.

Remember when the 2014 Spurs annihilated the Heat in the Finals and the next season every team began to adopt similar “pace and space” principles? The same thing is beginning to take shape now, except with the Warriors instead of the Spurs.

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Because of Golden State’s vast array of flexible wings (and Draymond Green), they can act as a Swiss Army knife on defense, switching between every pick imaginable while still corralling the ball handler. Since this practice lead the Warriors to a championship this past season, many executives are scheming to replicate their own version of that and hopefully strike big in the postseason as well.

Milwaukee is a great example of a team constructing itself similarly with their deep rotation of long, athletic wings that can reign terror on defense. However unfortunately for the Bucks, their wings cannot shoot like the Splash Brothers.

Teams around the league are craving (in some cases even overpaying) for the so-called “3-and-D” wing that can spread the floor and rotate through the 2-4 slots in the lineup. If you look closely, I am pretty sure you can see DeMarre Carroll and Wesley Matthews nodding their heads solemnly at that statement.

Portland is an interesting case because this offseason they elected to stock up on young, fair-priced big men (a seemingly out of touch commodity at this point) after realizing that their chances of retaining LaMarcus Aldridge were slim to none. While the rest of the league was drooling at the idea of replicating what is happening in Golden State, Olshey and his staff went the other direction. They were in a contrarian state of mind and I respect the hell out of that.

Let us look back at some of the highlights of Portland’s offseason in bullet format:

Nicolas Batum (their prototype for a 3-and-D wing) is sent to Charlotte for Gerald Henderson and the ninth pick of the 2014 draft, Noah Vonleh.
Steve Blake and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson are traded to Brooklyn for Mason Plumlee and Pat Connaughton.
Al-Farouq Aminu signs a four-year, $30 million contract.
Ed Davis signs a three-year, $20 million contract.
Trade essentially nothing for Maurice Harkless.
Damian Lillard signs a five-year, $120 million extension.
Enes Kanter signs a four-year, $70 million offer sheet that is eventually matched by Oklahoma City.

Okay, okay. So maybe they didn’t COMPLETELY think contrarian from the rest of the league. They still got two guys in Aminu and Harkless who could fill the role of a useful “3-and-D” guy (Henderson is just a “D” guy), they just happened to pay a fairly insignificant price for those players. Instead of dishing out $60 million to Carroll or Matthews, they will pay a little more than half that price to two guys who could turn out to be just as valuable.

The part of the offseason that I found most fascinating for the Blazers are the signing of Davis and acquirement of Plumlee and Vonleh. My guess is that Olshey noticed a market inefficiency amongst big men (Davis is severely underpaid in my opinion. He got the same contract as Aron Baynes!) and flipped his lucrative “3-and-D” assets while they were hot.

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Batum has been a useful player for an extended period now and is still somehow only 26 years old, but he randomly struggled shooting the three (was always around 38 percent for his career before plummeting to 32 percent last season). Although he was dealing with a wrist injury, that kind of dip has to be concerning and puts a cap on his value. Throw in the fact that his contract was expiring and the idea of dealing him for a useful wing guy who knows his role (Henderson) and a young, controllable big man with an array of different offensive and defensive talents (Vonleh) turns into a no brainer.

Plumlee is kind of an enigma at this point in his career. He fell in and out of favor with the coaching staff in Brooklyn, yet is routinely involved in Team USA camps on behalf of Coach K. He is a good leaper and has the skill set to be one of those pick and roll kamikaze big men who slice the defense down the middle to open up shooters or a lob over the top. You would like for him to be a bit more stout to handle some low post behemoths in the West, but there is a reason why people are divisive on their opinion of him. Considering the price tag for Portland was Hollis-Jefferson (a worse version of MKG to me) and Steve Blake, I would say the risk was well worth it.

With Meyers Leonard, Plumlee, Davis and Vonleh, Portland now has a young, and athletic frontcourt (I purposely refrained from naming Kaman here because he is nether young or athletic) within the same age bracket as their star — Lillard — and his potential sidekick, C.J. McCollum. Aminu and Harkless could be dramatic swing pieces for this roster, as their development is key to rounding out the lineup.

All summer I read sympathy posts on behalf of the Blazers because of their unsuccessful attempt to keep their once promising core of Matthews, Batum, Lillard and Aldridge in tact. Instead of sulking with the reality of things, Olshey quickly blew it up and sought out under appreciated assets to accompany his cornerstone in a quest to speed up the road to relevance once again.

Will he succeed on that quest? It remains to be seen. I think Portland is going to be better than most people seem to think this next season. Maybe that thought is coming from my own contrarian heart instead of my brain.

Either way, I cannot wait to see how things play out.

Next: NBA: Complete Offseason Grades For All 30 Teams

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