The Portland Trail Blazers have not been blessed with the best draft position since they began rebuilding their franchise at the end of the Damian Lillard era. Three straight seasons of lottery picks have yielded interesting players, but nobody of the “no-brainer” variety like first-overall pick in 2023 Victor Wembanyama or presumed 2025 headliner Cooper Flagg.
Evaluating recent drafts is perilous even under the best of circumstances. NBA players often take 4-5 years to develop fully. More so when a team fancies wildcards like Shaedon Sharpe and Scoot Henderson, athletic guards whose ceilings seem boundless but who also need some work in order to assimilate to the professional game. When you roll the dice, you have to take the good and bad together.
Understanding these truths, we tackle a question from the Blazer’s Edge Mailbag about Portland’s recent draft success, or lack thereof.
Dave,
One thing I don’t see even though you’ve covered [Blazers General Manager Joe] Cronin’s track record pretty deeply is talk of his drafting ability. How do you think he’s done with the draft? Should he continue to be in charge of this important development tool? Do you trust management to run this draft and the ones later on where we have more picks?
Kyle
Whether you or I trust management is a moot point. Ownership trusts them and they have the helm during this process. That’s the end of that story.
It’s hard to tell how Portland’s recent picks will turn out. We haven’t seen the ultimate end of the developmental curve for Sharpe and Henderson. If Sharpe averages 19 as an offense-only player and Scoot is a bust, I think we can claim that Portland didn’t make great use of the 7th pick in 2022 and the 3rd in 2023. If Sharpe becomes a huge scorer (and half a two-way player) and Henderson starts, the judgment will be kinder. There are too many variables to make a firm determination yet.
Right now I’m not terribly worried about Portland’s ability to evaluate young talent. It might be harder to see in the draft context because the talent pool is limited and the order predetermined. No matter how much the Blazers liked Wembanyama, they weren’t able to pick him. That says nothing about their ability to identify his potential impact, everything about drafting third instead of first.
If you look at the players Portland has traded for, the story becomes more hopeful. The Blazers have chased young players for the last couple seasons, in effect using the trade market as a secondary draft. Toumani Camara and Deni Avdija, the fruits of their labors, now start for the team. Cronin and company identified those players as desirable, then went out and got them among the dozens and dozens of potential trade targets. They have at least some ability to evaluate developing talent. They probably don’t lose that when they make draft selections.
I think most would argue that Sharpe, Henderson, and Donovan Clingan are an interesting collection of players. Few Portland fans tab that trio as the heart of the team’s problems. The Blazers probably did OK.
One way to understand how “OK” (or not) would be to ask what the ideal alternative would have been. What would have happened if the Blazers, with the benefit of hindsight, could have selected the optimal player available to them in each draft? Would the team look much different right now?
Usually exercises like this are silly. But we have an opportune window right now to apply a silly exercise because the Blazers have had three lottery picks in a row, have used all three, and have kept all the players involved up to this point. No trades have intervened which would have altered the picks. The team could have finished with a slightly different record—and thus a different spot in the draft order—had they selected differently, but none of the available players would have been so dominant as to alter the team’s course on their own. Changes would be modest. It’s not ridiculous to speculate that the Blazers could have picked seventh-third-seventh from 2022-2024 no matter who they selected. That means, at least for this three-year draft window, we can measure what the team has done versus what they could have done pretty clearly.
To answer your question, let’s run that exercise and see what everybody thinks. What would perfect drafting have looked like and how far have the Blazers deviated from it?
2022 Shaedon Sharpe
With the seventh overall pick in 2022 the Blazers selected shooting guard Shaedon Sharpe. Last year Sharpe averaged 18.5 points per game on 45.2% shooting, 31.1% from the three-point arc in 31.1 minutes per game over 72 appearances. Sharpe’s defensive game has gone up and down. So has his tenure in the starting lineup. But he’s considered a good young prospect with near-unlimited upside in the scoring department.
The optimal pick available to Portland was probably Oklahoma City Thunder guard Jalen Williams. He averaged 21.6 points as an All-Star this year, shooting 48.4% from the floor and 36.5% from the three-point arc in 32.4 minutes per game. He played 69 games in the regular season and is still going strong in the 2025 NBA Finals as the second star behind Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. In addition to his offensive prowess, Williams is considered one of the stronger defenders in the league.
2023 Scoot Henderson
With the third overall pick in the 2023 NBA Draft the Blazers selected point guard Scoot Henderson. After a disastrous rookie season, Henderson rebounded last year to average 12.7 points and 5.1 assists in 26.7 minutes per game, shooting 41.9% from the field and 35.4% from the three-point arc. Most of his time has been spent as a reserve as he continues to adapt to the NBA game.
The optimal pick at Portland’s position in 2023 was likely Houston Rockets small forward Amen Thompson. He averaged 14.1 points and 8.2 rebounds in 32.2 minutes per game last season, shooting 55.7% from the floor and 27.5% from the arc. Despite the low three-point percentage, Thompson is coveted as an explosive, game-transforming defender, described almost mythologically as the best athlete in the history of the NBA.
2024 Donovan Clingan
With the seventh overall pick in 2024 the Blazers took seven-footer Donovan Clingan out of the University of Connecticut. During his rookie year, Clingan patrolled the middle of the floor for 1.6 blocks in 19.8 minutes per game, adding 6.5 points and 7.9 rebounds.
The best player available to Portland at that spot might have been Philadelphia 76ers guard Jared McCain. The 6’2 combo player averaged 15.3 points and 2.6 assists in 25.7 minutes per game, shooting 46.0% overall, 38.3% from the three-point arc.
Is the Aggregate Better?
So now, you be the judge.
In reality, the Blazers have Scoot Henderson, Shaedon Sharpe, and Donovan Clingan.
In my speculative re-draft they’d have Jared McCain, Jalen Williams, and Amen Thompson. That would leave them a roster of:
Guards
Jalen Williams, Anfernee Simons, Jared McCain, Matisse Thybulle, Rayan Rupert
Forwards
Deni Avdija, Amen Thompson, Toumani Camara, Jerami Grant, Jabari Walker, Kris Murray
Centers
Deandre Ayton, Robert Williams III, Duop Reath
Do you like the new, speculative roster better than the current one?
As you consider, you can also substitute in other players the Blazers could have drafted at their positions. You can even revert to Portland’s actual draft pick in a given year. If you like Clingan better than McCain, no problem.
The key question is whether, and how much, stronger you think Portland’s prospects would be had they drafted differently. That will tell you at least something about how the front office has fared.
Help answer Kyle’s question by sharing your impressions in the comments section below, both who you’d take with Portland’s “perfect” picks and how big the gap is between current and perfect.
And if you have Mailbag questions, you can always send them to blazersub@gmail.com and we’ll try to answer as many as possible!