Road To A Title: Part One


The Inaugural Draft

What an exciting time it was. The NSL was born and the landscape was about to be crafted and sculpted via the draft. Thirty teams, thirty different dreams, and, a helluva lot of picks about to go down over the next month. The Portland Trailblazers had drawn the 14^th pick in the lottery, and based on our rankings and estimations, we saw one of LeBron James, Paul George or James Harden falling to us. If all went correctly and teams went youth where I expected them to, the Blazers would have a star to build a win-now team around.




Harden would be the guy to fall to the 14^th spot, and I didn’t hesitate to quickly snap him up. Despite perceptions about his ineffectiveness in the game, the ratings were just too good to not give it a try and eventually the 2k-version would have to catch up to the impact of the real-life version of The Beard. After our first pick, Jrue Holiday, Jusuf Nurkic, Mikal Bridges and Derrick Favors completed our starting unit. After that, Luke Kennard, Dewayne Dedmon, Tyreke Evans, Al Aminu, Isaiah Hartenstein rounded out the memorable player picks, with Duncan Robinson being the cherry on top at pick 466.

We were fortunate to add/find value at almost all draft picks, whether it be on court or as a trade asset. The initial draft is your best chance of creating a portfolio of assets that have more value than other teams. This depends on your trajectory, as to how you will value assets. I had faith that I had not only chosen players that had value, but that their attributes fit perfectly around Harden and each player had some trade value, dependent on the buyer.

The Preseason Tournament

The Pre-season Cup was on the line, with all NSL teams participating in a round-robin/knockout style tournament to ring in the brand new NSL. The Portland team went through almost undefeated, with Harden leading the as-was drafted team to glory. Team chemistry was great, and the depth of veterans was too much, toppling the Mavericks in the Finals. This wouldn’t be the last time these two teams would match up. Above all else was the sweet relief that the maligned, stigmatised Harden actually looked really, really impactful. The party wouldn’t last for too long, as Tyreke Evan’s banishment from the league for drug violations tore a big hole in the team’s build and send them scampering to find a replacement.





The First Big Moves

It wasn’t warranted to make wholesale changes, but where’s the fun in waiting. Teams were itchy to further put their stamp on their team and override the possible strictures that occurred having to draft from particular spots in a thirty-team draft. I know what you are thinking…

Of course it makes sense to blow a winning team up!

I have mentioned how disappointing it was to see Tyreke out of the league. Cop that, Portland. Evans is/was a 2k star and dominated off the bench in the pre-season. This was seen as an absolutely critical piece for a winning team. Shattered, I had to look at restricting the team, because without that strong scoring wing off the bench, I think we lost a lot of our power. Scanning the league, the first port of call was tracking down his replacement. Rudy Gay was pencilled in as this piece, and the Magic were happy to oblige, shipping him out to Portland for Dewayne Dedmon and a first.





Jrue Holiday was seen as a less than ideal fit next to Harden and his value was floated – it’s just good business. Sacramento were keen, and send Bojan Bogdanovic, Serge Ibaka and a first for him and Aminu.

At the same time, the young Wizards were sniffing around Nurkic for a buy-low opportunity, and the competing Blazers couldn’t run the risk of him now playing all season. Portland drove a hard bargain, acquiring Old Man Marc Gasol, Jakob Poeltl and a first for Nurkic.

Soon after, the Blazers front office noticed that the bottoming out Knicks were advertising Capela, and it seemed too good of a fit next to Harden. The cost of this was Derrick Favors, Jakob Poeltl and a first.




With the team salary skyrocketing, something had to be done. The team loved Serge and he was a perfect piece for the team, but he made too much money versus his role. He was moved out to the Warriors for Jabari Parker.

To round out the flurry of deals, a deal was struck up between the Utah Jazz and Portland, with Jimmy Butler coming to Portland for Bogdanovic, Kennard, Marc Gasol and a first. Piggybacking onto this deal, Portland sent out Mikal Bridges and another first for Robert Covington. Unbeknownst to Portland management, Terence Davis, who was thrown into the deal for Covington, is actually a really good player. This proved key down the line.

And this, is how you shuffle an entire team. This team would be the unit that took off on a run from about week four of the season. Who remained? Harden, Butler, Covington, Parker and Capela as the starters, with Rudy Gay as the lynchpin off the bench.

We mortgaged a fair bit of the future to build for the now, but this is typically the philosophy that I take into each season.

The Streak

The aforementioned team above would take the league by storm for close to two months, reeling off almost 30 consecutive wins. Butler was dominant, and the point guard experiment with him worked great when used. Sure the schedule was a little light, but this amount of wins is now fluke – this team could play. A fun wrinkle was that at the same time, the powerful Chicago Bulls were completing a similarly impressive win streak. What do you do to celebrate such dominance? Irrational trades coming in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1…




The Blow-Up

I tend not to value wins and losses as the priority in terms of the team. My gaze moving forward is gauging value and momentum. I tend to look at the team much like an investment portfolio, with the continued acquisition of value or momentum being as important, if not more important, than day-to-day form of the team.

The Warriors shopped Jamal Murray, as he was too similar to LaVine. I believed the portfolio had pieces that interested the Warriors. This was seen as an opportunity to acquire an asset that likely won’t help the team as much in the day-to-day, but has a trajectory of being a franchise star and netting much more value down the line. The GMs came to an agreement, swapping Murray and Covington and two firsts, 2020 and 2022 Sacramento firsts.





Coincidentally or not coincidentally, around this time, the team’s form fell off a relative cliff (compared to the dominance of the previous two months) and I fell into a trade/pity spiral, loading every chamber in the pistol and shooting shots. We were satisfied with the Murray acquisition, but it did sour the balance of the team. What was at risk with another trade was further dampening the wonderful start to the season by completing one trade too many (another one too many), and adding on significant risk where it wasn’t necessary.

A smaller deal was completed, in which the Blazers brought in the redemption tale Dwight Howard in for Terence Davis and Damian Jones. Howard, while old, is still a great traditional big man, and with his skillset quite similar to Capelas, allowed the team to explore deals that included Capela, with the insurance there as a likely capable replacement.

Finally, as the crescendo of some pretty furious trade hustling, what started out as banter about a superstar, escalated quite quickly into serious talks to take a huge leap in Portland.

‘You wouldn’t have what it takes to pry him from me’, said the GM