The Trail Blazers have torn down this year’s roster — they don’t like the word tanking, but if it walks like a duck… — with plans to quickly rebuild a contender around Damian Lillard.
Is that possible? Likely? Damian Lillard believes it is, he told Chris Haynes of Yahoo Sports in a lengthy interview, adding there is “no way” next season’s Portland team ends up in the same position as this season’s.
“And I also think we’ve taken some steps back as an organization, obviously with the moves that we’ve made [at the trade deadline]. But we’ve also positioned ourselves to do something that we haven’t been able to do since I’ve been here, which is we’ve opened up money, we got picks, we got a $22 million trade exception, we got a $6 million trade exception, we got the full mid-level, we got the biannual. We have an opportunity, and we got flexibility. There are guys we can bring in that can make us a team that can compete for a championship, but we have to…