Joe Cronin, Trail Blazers general manager and, on a seasonably scorching Monday afternoon in Sin City, a human pincushion for the two dozen reporters crammed into an interview room inside the Thomas & Mack Center, knew he was in for pointed questions. It had been more than a week since Damian Lillard’s trade request, and everyone from Portland to Miami wanted answers.
Was there an update on the Lillard trade talks?
“As far as any negotiations, trade details, I’m not going to talk about those,” Cronin said.
Has Cronin spoken to Lillard since he asked out?
“No,” Cronin said.
Did the experience other teams had dealing with unhappy superstars—James Harden, Kevin Durant, et al.—educate Cronin on how to handle his?
“Patience,” said Cronin, “is critical.”
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Here’s the reality: On a Lillard trade, the Blazers are nowhere. Miami, Lillard’s preferred destination, has made an offer. Portland doesn’t like it. The Blazers have encouraged other teams to make offers. So far there haven’t been any, at least not serious ones. Whether it’s Lillard’s contract (with four years and north of $200 million left on it) or his Miami-or-bust messaging (as delivered by Lillard’s agent, Aaron Goodwin), a market beyond South Florida has not materialized. And the Heat know it.
“I think the teams that have ended up in the most positive situations post-trade have been the ones that have been really diligent in taking their time,” Cronin said. “They’ve not been impulsive, or the teams that really kept their urgency under control. I think that’s how my approach has been with this and will be with this. We’re going to be patient, we’re going to do what’s best for our team, we’re going to see how this lands. And if this takes months, it takes months.”
Months? Well … maybe. Lillard, understandably, would like clarity, the sooner the better. Portland, though, needs a return. A big return. A Durant-level package sets the Blazers up for years. A Bradley Beal–type deal could set them back.
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“In any deal, the goal is to come out with the best outcome,” said Cronin. “So, for us, I mean, that can be many different things. It could be more of a win-now player, and that would be intriguing to us. It could be a young player and picks, and that would be intriguing. It could be just picks, and we would look at that as well. For us, it’s how can we maximize this return? And I don’t think we have any set parameters; we would evaluate each deal case by case and choose the best one.”
And if one doesn’t materialize?
“The goal is always to have Dame as a Trail Blazer,” Cronin said. “It always was and always will be. I mean, we wanted him to retire a Trail Blazer, so we’re very open-minded to any time Dame wants to be a part of us.”
There’s where Cronin loses me. There’s where Cronin loses everybody, really. Keep Lillard? Maybe four years ago, when Portland was coming off a trip to the conference finals and Lillard was on the friendlier side of 30. Now? The Blazers fresh off a 33-win season and Lillard is days away from turning 33. As eager as Lillard is to leave Portland is as anxious as Cronin should be for the package a trade will get them.
The Blazers, despite spending lavishly to retain Jerami Grant and matching Dallas’s modest three-year offer sheet to Matisse Thybulle, are rebuilding. Shaedon Sharpe is 20. Anfernee Simons is 24. Scoot Henderson, the third pick in last month’s draft, is 19. Henderson played 21 minutes in Portland’s Summer League opener before tweaking his shoulder, but that was enough to recognize that the Trail Blazers need to do whatever it takes to empower him.
Which is what made Cronin’s reaction to Lillard’s trade request so … strange. The statement he put out when the request went public (“we have been clear that we want Dame here, but he notified us today he wants out and he’d prefer to play someplace else”) suggested he was surprised by it.
“I wouldn’t say surprised,” Cronin said. “I think Damian’s been great about communicating with us throughout his career and over the last three months since the season ended we had numerous, numerous meetings with Dame where we understood his perspective and what his concerns were. So when those concerns weren’t addressed by July 1st, I understood why he went in that direction.”
“It made sense to me. It didn’t surprise me, I wouldn’t say, but any time a player that you care about that much breaks that news to you, it does jolt you. So, when you finally hear the truth, or you finally face that reality, it was jolting. But I wouldn’t say surprising, just because I knew that he had concerns about the direction that we’re headed.”
But did Cronin really believe the Blazers, with limited cap flexibility, could have cobbled together a roster strong enough to make Lillard believe he could contend with it?
“I mean, there’s so many deals that we’re constantly talking through with teams,” Cronin said. “And there’s so many that you think are right there and then you lose it, or it resurfaces. So I don’t know if we had anything teed up incredibly to where we thought there was a 90% chance of happening. But there were a dozen deals that made sense for us that had a pretty good chance of happening. So I would have liked to have seen how that would have played out. But I understand by July 1st, if you don’t have it you may not have it two weeks later, either.”
The challenge now, Cronin admits, is daunting. “How do you replace Damian Lillard?” Cronin asked. The Blazers don’t need to replace Lillard, of course. They need a package of young players, draft picks and expiring contracts that meet his value. That means drumming up interest. Miami is believed to be willing to part with Tyler Herro and has a couple of future first-round picks to deal. To get the Heat to beef up its offer, Cronin needs to find a rival for them to compete with.
That takes time. Patience. A willingness to deal with some uncomfortableness around the greatest player in franchise history. Cronin says the Blazers want to do right by Lillard. “What the rest of his career looks like, we care about that,” Cronin said. But he made clear where his loyalties lie. “We have to do what’s best for us,” Cronin said.
“And we’ve got to find the right deal and find the right makeup of the team that we’re going to go forward with.”
Translation: Settle in—this could take a while. Lillard may end up in Miami, but Cronin’s words suggested it wouldn’t be any time soon, and it wouldn’t be for what the Heat currently have on the table. Portland has one shot at trading a player of Lillard’s caliber. They can’t afford to blow it.
