By Brett Koremenos
Superstars are everything in the NBA. Teams lacking them race to the bottom of the standings for a chance to draft the next Stephen Curry or LeBron James in the NBA's draft lottery. Franchises already employing one (or more) of these players then embark on the frantic and unforgiving process of building a title-worthy supporting cast around their marquee players.
The Portland Trail Blazers are currently in the former state, trying to rebuild after losing one of the game's elite players to a conference foe. Though the team employs an All-Star point guard in Damian Lillard, the prevailing wisdom says that Portland needs to replace the star power of LaMarcus Aldridge in their lineup in order to return to the top of the West.
Judging from their surprisingly competitive start to this season, however, Portland may already have another superstar in their midst. But that star isn't a specific player. Instead, it may be a vision for an entire roster meshed with a system perfectly designed for today's NBA.
Without thinking of specific players, what type of player would you pick position-by-position to fill out an NBA team? Though the answers may vary, an archetypical roster would look something like this:
The final piece of this ideal roster puzzle would be a little more abstract: versatility. Every NBA team needs to have an ability to play with some traditional size for the remaining teams in the league capable of rolling out productive units that feature two frontcourt behemoths. Yet at the same time, this roster would definitely need to have 1-2 wing players capable of sliding up a position (or two) in order to match up with the smaller, more mobile lineups that teams like Golden State can roll out.
After looking over that list, take a gander at Portland's roster and see how it matches up. Mason Plumlee certainly fits the mold as the starting center. Meyers Leonard and Noah Vonleh are two youngsters flashing the potential to be solid stretch bigs in this league. Free agent signee Al-Farouq Aminu is a top-notch defender shooting a hair below league average from 3. Allen Crabbe, a reserve wing, is third on the team in 3-point percentage at 38.8 percent. And C.J. McCollum and Lillard certainly seem to qualify as dynamic ballhandlers capable of helping an offense pile up points.
Four players in particular -- Ed Davis, Gerald Henderson, Chris Kamen and Aminu -- are emblematic of the team's commitment to system fit over pure talent grabs.
Davis has spent his pre-Portland career in Toronto, Memphis and L.A. as a frontcourt enigma who was too slight to play the 5 and too unskilled to carve out a niche, despite his tremendous rebounding and finishing, at the 4. But G.M. Neil Olshey and head coach Terry Stotts, who worked with a similar player in Brandon Wright while an assistant in Dallas, brought Davis in with a clear idea of exactly how to use him. Over the course of the season, Davis has played just 60 combined minutes with the team's two other traditional centers -- Kamen and Plumlee. The rest of that time Davis has backed up Plumlee and provided the Blazers with a 5 man capable of keeping their pick-and-roll machine going at all times.
And the presence of Davis, along with the team prioritizing minutes for the youngsters Leonard and Vonleh at the 4, comes at the expense of the veteran Kamen. At 33, Kamen is coming off a fairly productive season near the end of his prime years. But the problem with Kamen is he not only doesn't fit into Portland's new timeline, he doesn't mesh into a role that helps the Blazers frontcourt. A post-up player and mid-range jump shooter, Kamen neither possesses the chops to finish athletically as a roll man nor the "stretchiness" to convert into a full time 3-point threat. And even though he is still capable of providing production for a team hanging around the playoff race, Kamen has played in just three games.
Though injuries contributed to his early season absence to the lineup, Henderson was potentially at risk to be put in a situation similar to Kamen. During his time in Charlotte, Henderson was a middling 3-point shooter (career 31.9 percent) who mostly operated off screens and post ups. But probably due to a shift in player development focus, Henderson is now shooting 45.5 percent from beyond the arc on his 33 attempts this season in a Blazers uniform. If that keeps up, hey may even find himself back in the starting lineup, pushing McCollum to the supersub role he seems destined for.
Aminu is also creeping up toward 3-point respectability at 34.5 percent. Further improvement with his shot combined with his already sound perimeter defense could give Portland a top-tier 3-&-D wing. Aminu also far more value given his ability to slide up to power forward and allow the Blazers to easily match teams going small against them. This type of versatility is essential for a team without the sheer talent to get past opponents, especially in the playoffs.
What does this all this mean for a Portland team that currently sits in just the "nice surprise" category with an 11-15 record? Quite a bit, actually, thanks to the team's youth. The oldest rotation regular is Henderson at 28. Davis is just 26 while Aminu, Plumlee and Lillard are all 25. Given the team has a scoring differential -- +0.1 -- of a .500 team, there's reason to believe a competitive team could be had with just some patience and internal development.
Stotts has already shown his commitment to player development while Olshey has been the architect behind this vision. With the youthful pieces -- along with future assets and flexibility -- put together by Olshey and a system that's in sync with the direction of this evolving league that's in place thanks to Stotts, the Blazers can be extremely selective with who gets added to their core going forward. There is no need for Portland to take a risk like say, Milwaukee did, and nab a B-level free agent like Greg Monroe in a move that was more a talent-grab than a seamless fit with the rest of their roster.
Should they land a big upgrade that fits perfectly into the vision already in place, Portland would move quickly from a youthful, .500 team trending upward to the 50-55 win range associated with most championship contenders -- though they may get to that same place by simply keeping this core together for a couple seasons.
We entered this season thinking the Blazers were destined to sink toward the bottom of the West, back into the sea of teams reliant on lottery luck to land the superstars necessary to vault back into contender status. Instead, we may be seeing that Portland already has the star they need: their system.
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