 What's the word, y'all? We gotta make this video about Damien Lillert and the Portland Troll Blazers. If you did not know, officially, unofficially, Damien Lillert has been shut down for the rest of the season. They played against the Bulls a couple nights ago, and it was no Jeremy Grant, Anthony Simons, if there was no use of Nurkis, Damien Lillert, like they waved the white flag, y'all. It's official. And I do wanna say, right off Ripsoe, does not get misinterpreted throughout the course of this video. This is not me trying to plead to Damien or trying to plead to the Portland Troll Blazers to finally get him to a new team so he can be for a championship. That's not what my mindset is at. He's made a very apparent, they made a very apparent that this is a pairing that's gonna be together for a long time. And I think that's okay. I think it's okay to have a guy like Damien Lillert who will stay on one team forever or have to do who says Swiss teams. I think you can have both. So I'm not pleading to make any changes, but I do wanna say the future of Damien Lillert and the Portland Troll Blazers trying to contend in the lifespan of Damien, being this good, it's looking bleak, y'all. Damien Lillert is 32 years old. He's already had a couple injuries. The last year injury really scared me. I don't think he's gonna come back to this year and play as good as he did. But this is very important because you can make an argument. You can make it. I don't know if I would make this argument, but you can make an argument that Damien Lillert was the best point guard in basketball this season. And if you don't got him number one, you can't put him no lower than number three. And I'm talking the ITES, I'm talking the advanced stats already above. Damien Lillert just had the best year of his career and they didn't make the playoffs. Wasn't even close. And I'm thinking back on the entirety of Damien Lillert's career as I get these notifications about him getting shut down. And I'm thinking to myself, there's not been a year in Damien Lillert's career where he's been on a legit title contender. And that's kinda sad to me because he is an all NBA 76 player because again, he's 76 people. He is a proven playoff performer, especially if we get rid of that one series against the Pelicans that he bounced back pretty heavily on. And yet we have not seen him be on a team that is good enough to compete for a championship. Now you're looking at me and say, Kenny, they made it to the conference finals. If you forgot, trust me, I ain't forgot. But I look at the competition to that season and even though they were in the conference finals, they were going against the Warriors, y'all. I think we all knew how that series was going. I don't know a single same person that legitimately picked the Portland Trailblazers. And you know what? When I think about that playoff run, there's gonna be one performance that I will never, ever forget. Game seven, different nuggets. You probably think about, oh yeah, CJ had like almost 40 points. It ain't about CJ McCullum. Evan Turner in the fourth quarter of the game against the Denver Nuggets might have had 12 points or so off the bench. Evan Turner, he got to the free throw line. Like it was prime hard and bro. So I would never forget that performance. Evan Turner, one of the most random breakouts in the game, seven that was clutch and needed. But even then they got to the series against the Warriors and every panelist, everybody that's been watching the NBA that season knew that the Warriors about to go to the finals and they swept the Portland Trailblazers. So I don't even look at that season as a team that was really, really compete for a championship. And I look at what Dan just did at the age of 32 and I look at their current roster and I'm trying to figure out what can be done to change that. What can be done for Damian Lillard to finally get to that point? Now earlier in the season, I mean, they looked pretty solid. They were the one, two seed for a little ways. They had a game where Anthony Simon to the game winner. I wanna say that was against the Suns. Josh Hart had a game winner in a corner and then Jeremy Grant also had a game winner. This isn't the first month of basketball. And I came onto this platform, I went onto my podcast and I said, I didn't think it was really sustainable. I got a lot of Trailblazers fans pushing back on that. It is what it is. I was just thinking like, if you hit this many game winners, some of those shots are just not gonna go in and you're gonna lose those games. And eventually they did. And then we got to the debt line and they made a decent amount of moves but a lot of those moves were taking flyers on these younger dudes that might need to change a scenery. And it kind of felt like in that moment they were making the decision that this is not gonna be the year where we compete. I mean, again, you can look at that roster and say it was gonna be the year to compete and that was the truth. And throughout the course of me watching basketball and caring about basketball, it feels like the Portland Trailblazers has always been a few years behind making the big decision. The idea of disconnecting CJ McCullum and Damia Lillard made sense a couple of years before they did it. And they did finally do the deal. I don't think they didn't get anything of value. I think it was Josh Hart, it was the Q Alexander Walker, it was Dee Dee, it was a first round pick. But I gotta look to see what that first round pick turned into. I genuinely did not know. I thought it was a 2022 first round pick but it might be one of those picks that's protected this year and then unprotected this year, whatever, whatever. And I think a lot of people do not realize how young the Portland Trailblazers roster really is. You got 32 year old Dame and use of nuggets at the top. And I guess Jeremy Grant who's like 28 but the rest of the roster is so very young. And you're asking Damia Lillard to mentor these dudes, continue to be an all NBA first team caliber player and also try to compete while all these other dudes are trying to learn the way of the NBA and blossom into the players that they could potentially beat. According to this, the Portland Trailblazers have the eighth youngest team in basketball. The eighth youngest team in basketball with a superstar caliber player at the helm. And when we made a video a few months ago talking about these teams in No Man's Land, I made a video about the Bulls, I made a video about the Wizards. And I feel like there's another team in there but regardless, I didn't add the Portland Trailblazers because the Portland Trailblazers have something that's unique that these other teams don't and that is the superstar caliber player. But they're still in No Man's Land even with Damia Lillard. And that's a little bit frightening. There's some pros because three out of the last four games Shayden Sharp has looked ridiculous. Like he always had these highlights and stuff but I think he put up 20 fold, 23 and 22 and then he had a stinker in the last one but that's what comes with a dude, that's what 19, 20 years old and he didn't really play much ball in college or whatever. So there's a slight positive there but you're also asking him and for Simon's, your future first round pick this year to step up to the highest degree this early in their career if you wanna get to the point where Dam is competing. And I think you owe it to Dam. I think you owe it to Dam to try to put a competent and good team around him. You can't keep asking him to go out there and play for lottery odds. Now that's not been the thing that they've done notoriously. I mean, for the entirety of Damia Lillard's career practically he's been a playoff player. It's four seed here, four seed here, five seed here, four seed here, three seed here. He's always been that guy to make the playoffs. That's undoubtedly the truth. But again, the rosters are built for playoff teams and nothing deeper. And now they're trying to hit this restructure but they're still keeping the head that's 32 years old and still a dog. But by the time Shayden Sharp, by the time this future first round pick are good enough to really, well you really think they can compete to the highest level, Dam might be 35, 36. And we can't promise as good as he is that his body and his ability is gonna age that well. The best scenario for this trailblazer team is to get the first overall pick. I guess you can say that about every team in the lottery. But they, like you just got the hope that you get a New Orleans Pelicans type jump or same year the Memphis Grizzlies jumped up to get John Merritt, the Pelicans jumped up to get Zion Williamson. Like the flat odds have made it. So you don't necessarily need to tank all the way out to get that chance to get that first overall pick. That is the one thing that I think can save them because it just opens up the door for different options. And one thing I will say about the trailblazer organization I don't think it's for the lack of effort. I think this is the first year why I looked at the trades that they did that line I was like, oh they sell it or last year too because they was injured and they sold TJ. But these only only two years. And previous years they were willing to give up bags to try to bring players in like trade the two first round picks for Robert Coveton. Again, not the smartest thing to do but you did it because you thought he could be the piece to help the team. So I don't want to fault them for that even if those deals don't look great, they've tried. And I guess this is a new regime, new front office and stuff and I don't really know exactly what their head is at but they've tried in the previous years to continue to build the team. They've just fell short. And the reality is if you want to get to the point where you are building the team that's competitive enough to really compete you're going to have to trade some of these young valuable players. They got a few men. Shane Sharp and Anthony Simons are studs. Capital S studs. And a lot of teams will be interested and I don't know how this all seems to go and it really depends on how the playoffs go. Some team might underperform and then they decide, oh we got to make a trade here, here, here. But they're going to be a lot of teams and you say, okay we want to get somebody that's in and good enough to help us win right now and we're putting Shane Sharp and Anthony Simons on the table. There's going to be a lot of teams interested. But if you're a Portland treble as a fan or you're a Portland treble as a front office speed person you might not even want to do that because you think the upside of those two players are really good. But do you care about the upside of potential of your roster three years? Or do you care more about Damian Lillard getting the Damian Lillard like a way to get him to win? The reality of the situation is building the championship quality team is extremely, extremely hard. But they have the, they have a piece but that's kind of it. And y'all know I'm not a guy that brings advanced stats to the table often. But I may, I said you can make the argument that Damian Lillard has been the best point guard in basketball of the season. I'm looking at a few stats that, yeah, legitimately. This is from Dunks and Threes. It's EPM, estimated plus minus. If you want to learn more you can click here. And I just targeted by point guards. Damian Lillard is number one over Luca over Steph Curry over James Brown. Again, I'm not huge into advanced stats but I think it can help your case if your case is to say that Damian Lillard was the best point guard in basketball this year. If you want to go to offensive Raptor from 538, he was number two in the league. Raptor wore, he was number four in the league behind Lucas in the two MVP, two of the three MVP candidates. He was above Shay there. Total Raptor, he's like, like you could again make the argument that he's been that. Also defensive Raptor has Dennis Smith Jr. as a top five defender again. This is why we don't use advanced stats for everything but it can paint a picture, especially if you're trying to make an argument in the favor of Damian Lillard right now. So I would say based on this season and the last that the trailblazers are stuck in no man's. It kind of pigeonholed themselves to have to pay Jeremy Grant a decent amount of money. And there's a lot of money on the table for Jeremy earlier and he turned it down. And then he didn't have a great second half of the year. So I mean, maybe you could save a little bit there but I do believe a guy like Jeremy Grant might be good on the open market. And what he showed us when he went from Denver to Detroit that he might be willing to take a bag for one of those bad teams because that's what he wants, he wants the bag. That's what he did the one time and he might do it again. You're kind of stuck with use of nuggets because he's just not very good and the contract is long and extensive and a lot of teams aren't gonna bite at that. So it's like we've agreed that it's gonna be Dame, it's gonna be Ephraim, it's gonna be Jeremy, it's gonna be Nerf. And that is not gonna help you compete. And that is the tough spot that the trailblazer organization is in right now. So you let me know what you think about Damian. Again, I do want to say shout out to Dam. He gave us a lot of memories this season. Again, an amazing, amazing stellar year especially coming off that abdominal injury that looked like it was gonna keep him out for even longer than what it ended up keeping him out. One heck of a season, Dam. I'm very interested to see where he gets placed on all NBA. I heard some people saying that they don't think he's gonna make it just because they didn't make the playoffs, but it's such a crazy circumstances and people were paralleling it, I don't know, to Bradley Beal when he averaged 30 plus points per game and the Wizards were not very good. But I think these are totally, totally different. He's gonna be on one of my all NBA teams. I just gotta figure out how much I value the overall win. I do believe that Damian Lillard added a lot more wins to a really, really bad roster. So we're gonna see, we'll see.