Jusuf Nurkic’s compound leg fracture was supposed to be the death knell in Portland’s 2018-19 season, but Damian Lillard put the team on his back and carried them all the way to the Western Conference Finals. It was a stunning run from a team missing its second most important player, and it left Blazers fans optimistic about the future, even if Nurkic would miss a sizable chunk of the 2019-20 campaign.

Unfortunately, Portland lost a lot more than it was able to gain over the course of the summer, and Nurkic’s absence has had a large ripple effect that has left the Blazers on the outside looking in on the playoff race. It’s unlikely that the team envisioned a repeat given their limited cap space and the loss of a few important players, but it’s still a shame to see a year of Lillard’s prime spent this way.

Let’s see how the Blazers got here.

Dame’s Dominance

Despite all of the obstacles that the Blazers have faced this year, there has been one constant: Damian Lillard. Portland’s lack of depth has been a major issue all season, and while guys like Anfernee Simons and Gary Trent Jr. have stepped up from time to time, the Blazers have put an incredible burden on Lillard’s shoulders.

While Lillard’s consistent elite play is far from a surprise, he found an extra gear this season, turning in possibly the finest stretch of his career.

From January 20 to February 3, Lillard was simply electrifying. Over that two-week span, he averaged 48.8 points, 7.2 rebounds, 10.2 assists, 1.2 steals and 8.2 3-pointers per contest while shooting .548 from the field and .923 from the line on over 10 free throws per contest.

In fact, those two weeks ranked first and fourth in terms of the most impactful fantasy performances of the season.

Dame had a scoring run of 61, 47, 50, 36, 48 and 51 points in that time and carried fantasy managers to massive wins. And for that night with the paltry 36 points, Lillard made up the difference by racking up a triple-double. He opened January with an 11-point, 5-for-20 shooting dud but would score at least 20 points in every game up until March 7. Watching Lillard tear up his opponents has always been must-see TV for all basketball fans, but this was beyond any reasonable expectations.

Lillard was able to put the Blazers on his back, not that that’s a new phenomenon, but his run at the end of January was something that we may not see again for a long while. When the season stopped Dame sat 5^th/6^th in 8/9-cat leagues and was even better at 4/4 in terms of total value. And that’s on top of Lillard missing eight of the season’s first 64 games, the second-most absences of his career.

It has now been several years of Lillard sitting with a first-round ADP, though he always seems to find a way to outperform a couple players who get selected in front of him. Perhaps this stretch will stick in enough minds to push Lillard’s ADP out of first-round turn territory and deeper into the top-10. The consistency, availability and upside for runs like this make him impossible to ignore.

Hassan Whiteside

The other fantasy success story of Portland’s season was newcomer Hassan Whiteside. Highly derided by the end of his Miami tenure, Whiteside came to Portland as the regular-season replacement for Nurkic. After playing time became a major sticking point with Erik Spoelstra, Whiteside was gift-wrapped a chance to play huge minutes with limited competition. He and Nurkic have very different games, and it wasn’t always perfect, but Whiteside will go down as a massive victory for any fantasy GMs who rolled the dice on the big man this year.

Whiteside’s ability to rack up blocks and rebounds has never been in question, but his poor free throw shooting has been a major hangup in a stat set that generally relies on minutes to produce value. After breaking out in 2014-15, Whiteside spent the next two years averaging 29.1 and 32.6 minutes per contest. In two seasons prior to this year, however, injuries and a changing NBA landscape led to a more limited role for a player who received an extravagant four-year deal from the Heat, as Whiteside would average just 25.3 and 23.3 minutes per contest while missing 38 games. That placed a very tight ceiling on his fantasy appeal and frustrated a player who was making franchise cornerstone money.

This season, Whiteside received more than enough playing time to make up for any shortcomings. When the season stopped, he was averaging 16.3 points, a career-high 14.2 rebounds, a career-high 1.2 assists, 0.4 steals and a league-leading 3.1 blocks per game while shooting .618 from the field and .680 from the line in 31.3 minutes a night.

While the numbers at the charity stripe are still forcing fantasy GMs into punt strategies, it’s still a massive improvement on Whiteside’s career .606 average and the ugly .449 mark he posted in his final season in Miami. All told, Whiteside, as the last center standing in Portland, crushed expectations and has returned top-15/10 value in 8/9-cat leagues and is a first-round player in both formats in terms of total value. The sell-high window just never shut on him as he bucked the recent trend and kept on posting huge lines.

On the court, the drop off from Nurkic remained steep, especially in terms of playmaking, consistent effort and team defense, which is reflected in the Blazers’ record, but Whiteside was able to put together a big season and rehab his value a year before he hits the open market again. He remains an imperfect option as a modern center, but Whiteside is far from the big issue in terms of Portland’s station outside the playoff picture.

Indirectly, the story gets more complicated. Although Whiteside had great statistical success and filled a position of need, the maneuvering that the Blazers had to do to absorb his bloated contract ended up hurting the team more than expected.

Lack of Forward Depth

Nurkic’s lengthy absence meant that the Blazers had their hands tied to a certain extent. Whiteside was an elite rim-protector and rebounder who was openly available on the market, with a contract so out of whack that it wouldn’t take much in the way of assets to acquire him. In trading away Moe Harkless and Meyers Leonard, the Blazers were supposed to be getting more immediate impact.

Although the Blazers aren’t reaching the same heights they did a year ago, the departure of Harkless shouldn’t have been the death knell in Portland’s season. In losing both Harkless and Al-Farouq Aminu, however, the Blazers opted to upgrade their center position in exchange for a drop-off at the forward spot – a dip that would become even more apparent as Portland dealt with injuries all over the roster.

The hope was that third-year forward Zach Collins could rise into a more prominent role as a capable stretch four, someone who could both keep defenses honest from deep and protect the rim even though he lacked the muscle to contend with the NBA’s more prototypical centers. A dislocated shoulder three games into the season derailed those plans, and Portland’s gamble quickly went bust. Behind Collins, the Blazers were stuck with Mario Hezonja, Skal Labissiere, Anthony Tolliver and rookie Nassir Little as their power forward group.

For a team hoping to build on a deep playoff run, that depth was simply not good enough. Even if Collins was able to stay healthy, the Blazers bench would have been a massive question mark against the teams at the top of the daunting Western Conference. The problem was compounded by more disappointment at small forward.

Earlier in the offseason, Portland dealt the PF-capable Evan Turner to Atlanta in exchange for Kent Bazemore, who was to compete with Rodney Hood for minutes on the wing and Harkless’ old starting small forward spot. When Hood went down with a torn Achilles and it became clear that Bazemore just wouldn’t fit as the larger forward that the Blazers desperately needed, the team was left in a real bind. While their biggest fix came from the free agent pool (which we’ll get to shortly), Portland flipped Bazemore (and Tolliver) to Sacramento in exchange for their own offseason disappointment, veteran Trevor Ariza.

Any way you slice it, Portland’s forward rotation was not equipped to hold up against top competition. There were significant questions, even when the team was at full health, about who would absorb the defensive work that Aminu and Harkless had shouldered. The lack of lengthy, switchable defenders was always going to be the team’s Achilles heel.

In the end, the Blazers opted to make space for Whiteside and his $27 million salary, vaporizing flexibility in the process. Any trade deadline deal of consequence would’ve likely required Whiteside heading in the other direction, which would only create another major problem despite the high replacement level for centers.

Injuries

While the roster was flawed to begin with, there is little doubt that injuries have put a huge damper on the Blazers’ season.

The most glaring absence is that of Nurkic, who blossomed after being traded out from under Nikola Jokic’s shadow in Denver. Nurk Alerts were in full supply as soon as the big man landed in Rip City, and his second full season with the Blazers was a masterpiece. Nurkic finished the 2018-19 season with career-bests in points (15.6), rebounds (10.4), assists (3.2), steals (1.0), field goal percentage (.508) and free throw percentage (.773) while tying his previous best of 1.4 blocks per game.

Losing Nurkic for the bulk of the season was a huge blow for Portland, as the addition of Whiteside led to a wave of roster decisions that ended up leaving the Blazers in a tough spot. While Whiteside has a respectable net rating of plus-2.3 this season, it pales in comparison to Nurkic’s net rating of plus-10.5 from the 2018-19 campaign. The Blazers’ offense has also changed without Nurkic’s passing ability, with Whiteside boasting a 7.7 assist ratio this year compared to Nurkic’s 16.8 in his last season. They’re simply less dynamic, and Whiteside doesn’t command nearly as much defensive attention as Nurkic in general.

Nurkic was preparing to make his return when the season stopped but he may actually be worse off from this stoppage. He’s now been forced to rehab on his own and will need to shake off massive amounts of rust, making it unlikely that he plays in a significant capacity at any point in the “regular season.”

To further the issues up front, Collins was lost for the year right out of the gates, unable to even get going in what was supposed to be his breakout season. In an extremely small sample, Collins was managing to shoot .429 from deep to go along with 9.0 points, 4.0 rebounds and 0.7 swats per contest.

That the Blazers were willing to move out all of their power forward depth to elevate a player who was limited in his first two seasons is a huge vote of confidence for Collins. His fantasy stat set is still a bit thin in general, and it’s unlikely that he’ll really take off unless he starts collecting more blocks, but Collins is someone that the Blazers are intent on developing and is a player worth remembering as we move forward.

While a healthy Collins might not have been enough to put Portland back into a playoff spot on its own, the injury prevented the team from getting a long look at how he might fit going forward; a tough break as the Blazers prepare to shed one large salary this summer.

On the wings, Rodney Hood maintained the momentum from his strong playoff run last year and was getting the lion’s share of minutes over Kent Bazemore until he suffered a torn Achilles. His absurd .493 mark from deep gave Portland some reliable spacing, and even if he wasn’t picking up enough stats to be of more than fleeting use in fantasy, his injury forced the Blazers to turn to inexperienced fill-ins.

The problem was exacerbated by Bazemore’s dud of a run with the Blazers. He shot .347 from the field and an ugly .327 from deep; hardly acceptable for a supposed 3-and-D asset.

And those are only the major, long-term injuries.

Lillard missed eight games, two for personal reasons and six for a groin strain – though that would’ve been much more damaging had it happened at another time in the season, as Lillard took advantage of the All-Star break to rest up.

C.J. McCollum missed three games with a left ankle sprain. Whiteside has missed five games and suffered a left knee bone bruise. Labissiere went down with left knee inflammation shortly after carving out a big rotation role and hasn’t played since December 28 (though he’s now a member of the Hawks). Anfernee Simons leads the team in games played.

Melo

But of course, injuries breed opportunity, and Portland’s dire straits led to the return of Carmelo Anthony.

While Anthony is not the cure to what ails the Blazers, it is still good to see him back hooping on an NBA floor, as he deserves a better end than what transpired in Houston. He’s been pushed into 32.5 minutes per game over his 50 contests, far too much in a perfect world, but Anthony can still get his points.

On the back of 15.3 points, 6.3 rebounds, 1.6 assists, 0.8 steals, 0.5 blocks and 1.4 threes per game on 42.6% shooting, Anthony is a safe, if boring, late-round option for any fantasy players in need of some scoring punch. He remains over-rostered because of his name value but Anthony has at least been able to fit a little more seamlessly with the Blazers than he did with the Rockets.

Despite the feel-good story of Anthony’s return to the league, one has to wonder what the future holds. This spot opened up because Portland lost its two starting forwards over the summer and then lost two more during the season to significant injuries. Basketball Reference credits Anthony with a minus-3.7 Box Plus-Minus, meaning he’s approximately 3.7 points per 100 possessions worse than a league-average player. More troubling is that Anthony is actually minus-1.9 on the offensive end, worse than his minus-1.8 mark on defense. All told, he is sporting a minus-0.7 VORP.

A Joe Johnson-like ride into the sunset could be the best-case scenario, as no team will be offering Anthony the same kind of role he’s received this year unless they’re desperate.

There is certainly something joyous about seeing Melo go out and score, but his days in the league are winding down, and he’s simply being overexposed out of necessity as a member of the Blazers. Only time will tell if he can hang around in a league that’s getting increasingly ruthless about roster moves.