On June 22, NBA commissioner Adam Silver walked out onto the stage of the NBA draft and announced this bit of news: “With the third pick in the 2023 NBA draft, the Portland Trail Blazers select Scoot Henderson, guard, G League Ignite.”

Those 20 words changed the future of Portland basketball for years to come, and simultaneously threw the prior 11 years out the window.

In 2012, the Trail Blazers used the sixth pick in the draft to take Damian Lillard, a point guard from Weber State University.

Lillard won the 2012-2013 Rookie of the Year award, averaging 19 points per game (PPG), and played in all 82 regular season games. The Trail Blazers made it to the playoffs the next season and Lillard made the All-Star Game. In 2013, the Blazers drafted Lillard’s longtime wingman CJ McCollum, shooting guard, who averaged 19 PPG over nine seasons for Portland.

Lillard and McCollum led the Trail Blazers to the playoffs for eight consecutive seasons from 2014 to 2021. However, throughout those years, Portland never made it past the conference finals. The closest they got to winning the conference was in 2019, when they lost the series in four games to the Golden State Warriors.

After their continuous losses in the playoffs, Portland fired their head coach, Terry Stotts, during the summer of 2021. Chauncey Billups replaced him. 

Midway through the following season, the Trail Blazers traded McCollum and two other players to the New Orleans Pelicans for a first round pick, two second round picks, and four players. Portland hasn’t made the playoffs since.

Portland also traded for forward Jerami Grant from the Detroit Pistons in June 2022 and re-signed Grant to a deal this past summer, totaling $160 million over five years.

On March 11, Lillard injured his calf and was pulled from the rest of the season’s games. They also benched players such as Jusuf Nurkic, center, Anferenee Simons, guard, and Grant. Portland then replaced them with players that have little to no experience starting games, doing what in sports is called “tanking”. Tanking is intentionally losing games or worsening your chances to win with the intent of securing a better draft position.

Portland finished the 2023 season with a record of 33 wins and 49 losses. The NBA draft order is settled through a lottery, with the teams who performed more poorly having a higher chance of receiving the top pick. Portland’s record gave them the fifth best chance to get the top pick in the draft. 

The top pick was highly coveted due to Victor Wembanyama, who was the favorite to be selected first overall. The draft also featured Brandon Miller, forward, and Scoot Henderson, guard. In the lottery, Portland went from the fifth spot to the third spot.

On June 22, the Trail Blazers drafted Henderson. Nine days later, on July 1, ESPN insider Adrian Wojnarowski broke the news that Damian Lillard had requested a trade, with his preferred trade destination being the Miami Heat.

Currently, Lillard has yet to be traded and no solid traction between teams has been found regarding a trade. If Lillard does get traded, Portland will likely get multiple high draft picks, young players, veterans on expiring contracts, and the possibility of dumping Jusuf Nurkic. 

Miami has been speculated among fans to receive Lillard because of his request to be traded there, but the Utah Jazz, Brooklyn Nets, and San Antonio Spurs have also been rumored to be involved in negotiations.

Grant is currently the highest-paid player on the team. Last season, he averaged 20.5 PPG and shot 40% on three-pointers. With the departure of Nurkic also likely and no clear replacement for him on the roster, Grant will have to take on a bigger rebounding role, as he only averaged 4.5 rebounds a game last season.

Some other players who will have to step up are Simons, who averaged 21.1 PPG as the team’s second-highest scorer while making the second-most three-pointers on the team, and Portland’s starting guard/forward Shaedon Sharpe, who averaged 9.9 PPG, shooting 36% on three-pointers, and stealing the ball 1.2 times a game during his rookie season.

Henderson, Lillard’s potential replacement, was a five-star recruit out of high school and averaged 16.5 points and 6.8 assists per game while playing for the G League Ignite. He had 15 points, six assists, five rebounds, and one steal over 21 minutes of playing time in his Summer League debut, but he injured his shoulder and was shut down for the rest of the Summer League.

We don’t know exactly what this new era in Portland basketball will look like, but the result of next season will likely paint a picture of how the following years will play out without Damian Lillard.