How Portland Is Rewriting the NBA Rebuilding Script

Before the NBA season began, most hoops experts suggested the Portland Trail Blazers were professional basketball's equivalent of a stripped-down car, doused in gasoline, ready to be torched for insurance money. Westgate Las Vegas Superbook, for one, placed Portland's over/under win total at 26.5 victories. The team surpassed that mark in its last game before the All-Star break.

"We definitely took it as disrespect," Allen Crabbe, the team's third-year shooting guard, told VICE Sports. He and his glorious scrub of burnished copper hair were perched on a bench in the visitors' locker room in Madison Square Garden, about an hour before the Blazers would throttle the Knicks by 19 points. "I think one prediction might have had us as 29th in the whole league," he said. "We were like, 'Oh, man … 29th?' I mean, that was pretty low. But everybody bought in and we thought we could make a push at the playoffs."

Through three-quarters of the NBA regular-season slog, the Trail Blazers have emerged as the league's most heartwarming story. At 33-29, the youthful bunch is in seventh place in the merciless Western Conference and seemingly headed for a postseason play-date with a top-seeded powerhouse. The team's offense, currently ranked seventh in the league, is led by the combustible, trifecta-chucking backcourt of Damian Lillard and C.J. McCollum, both of whom are averaging over 20 points a game.

Portland is peaking at the right time. Since January 10, the Blazers have gone 18-5, with the fourth-best Net Rating in the league. The public finally took notice on February 19, when they annihilated the Golden State Warriors by 32 points, led by Lillard's 51 points in only 28 minutes. Portland wasn't supposed to be this good, and surely not right now.

To be fair, skepticism from the punditry was justifiable. Last year's 51-31 Portland team dynamited apart over the summer, and its shards were strewn around the league. LaMarcus Aldridge, Wes Matthews, Robin Lopez, and Arron Afflalo bolted in free agency; Nicolas Batum was dealt to the Charlotte Hornets for second-year forward Noah Vonleh and veteran Gerald Henderson. It was an unceremonious teardown for a team that had gone to the playoffs in five of the previous seven seasons and won 50 or more games four times. While the mob of Blazers hitting unrestricted free agency triggered an organizational transition, the group had maxed-out its potential in a conference with apex predators like the Golden State Warriors, San Antonio Spurs, and Oklahoma City Thunder.

After the Pacific Northwest exodus, the Blazers were left with star point guard Lillard and a bundle of obscure role players who were unaccustomed to substantial minutes and much responsibility. The team's only splashy summer move amounted to meaningless ripples: the Blazers extended a four-year, $70 million offer sheet to Oklahoma City center and restricted free agent Enes Kanter. It was matched by the Thunder and he stayed put.

The Blazers' rebuilding playbook seemed predictable: young dudes would oscillate between brilliant and brain-dead, losses would pile up, and the team would be compensated with a top lottery pick in the 2016 Draft. Portland even hoarded ten million dollars in unused cap space—the most in the NBA—indicating a desire to take on lousy contracts in exchange for assets (at the deadline, they scooped up a protected first-rounder from the Cleveland Cavaliers in return for burying the carcass of Anderson Varejao's salary).

The hardest part of rebuilding—and, in fact, usually the point of it—is finding a superstar, and unlike most teams that punch the reset button, Portland already had one in Lillard. Snubbed from the All-Star team and bristling at comparisons to the Warriors' Stephen Curry, he has been playing like a man possessed by wrathful demons. Lillard won Western Conference Player of the Week on Wednesday after averaging 26 points, 4.7 rebounds, and 5.7 assists. He's currently fifth in the league in scoring, at 25.1 points per game, and, remarkably, his True Shooting Percentage has remained equally efficient despite the boost in usage (which now ranks seventh-most in the NBA).

"Dame's our leader," McCollum said. "He's always looking to attack, he's able to draw a crowd and a lot of help defenders and that leaves us open. And it gets us into the bonus earlier." Initially, McCollum wasn't even aware of Lillard's staggering numbers. "When I saw the Player of the Month stuff, and they were comparing guys, that's when I realized what he was doing," he said. "But when you're playing every day, you get lost in the shuffle and forget what's going on. I know he scored 30 a bunch of games in a row."

McCollum is one of several Blazers who have benefited from the departure of four starters. He, Crabbe, and Meyers Leonard have all ascended from reserve status, playing around 15 minutes a game, to become important contributors. As the franchise was hemorrhaging veterans, general manager Neil Olshey also used free agency and trades to shrewdly add unsexy but undervalued frontcourt muscle. Al-Farouq Aminu, Mason Plumlee, and Ed Davis are all 26 years old or younger, and none makes more than $7.5 million a season. The trio is not a dominating force, but they hit the boards well, and punish opponents on the offensive glass.

While the Blazers' offense has remained explosive, and Aldridge's beloved mid-range jumpers have not been missed, much of the team's recent success is because of defensive improvement. Per NBA.com, up until February 1, Portland ranked 22nd in defensive rating, surrendering 105.4 points per 100 possessions. Since then, they've been fifth-best, giving up only 100.8 a night.

"We played some teams that didn't allow us to be a fluid as we wanted to be on offense," said Crabbe. "We looked at that and were like, 'Why can't we make teams feel uncomfortable? Why are we letting them get to where they want to be?' So, right before the All-Star break, coach challenged us to pick it up defensively."

The Blazers are one of the league's youngest teams and the camaraderie between players seems genuine. It's a breath of fresh air for Ed Davis, who came over in the offseason from the Los Angeles Lakers, a franchise that most resembles an overturned porta potty at Coachella. "Last year in L.A., we had eight or nine guys on contract years," he said. "So that right there, it just messes things up. Obviously, in a contract year, you want to focus on yourself, but when you have eight or nine guys doing that, it's a bad mix. A lot of guys knew they weren't going to be back and that they were trying to bring in star players. But here, we're going to stick together and it's going to be like this for a while."

After routing the Knicks, the Blazers headed for Boston and blundered straight into an ambush. In a 23-point loss to the Celtics, Portland gave up 19 offensive rebounds to a hungrier, more aggressive team. Dropping a SEGABABA on the far side of the continent is excusable, but it was a reminder that Portland's success might be quicksilver. The Celtics, several years into a rebuild of their own and currently boasting the third-best record in the Eastern Conference, look like a reasonable model for the Blazers to emulate. Both teams have made cagey acquisitions of young, mid-level talent and opted for immediate competitiveness instead of relying on lottery ping-pong balls. But Boston has a trove of Brooklyn Nets picks already in the bank; Portland, on the other hand, owes the Denver Nuggets a 2016 first-rounder if the Blazers make the playoffs (it's protected 1-14 this year and next).

Reconstructing a franchise is a complicated jigsaw puzzle, and pushing toward contention too early has consequences. Weighed down by max contracts and missing out on the opportunities provided by the lottery, teams calcify into mediocrity. Phoenix posted a surprising record in 2012-13, handed out a number of sizable contracts, and has since plunged back into the league's cold depths. Milwaukee signed Greg Monroe in hopes of building upon last season's playoff appearance and is now struggling along, identity-less, at 25-36. On the other hand, exercising extreme patience, like Philadelphia, risks arousing the ire of fans, the media, and Adam Silver's goon squad (and it also might not work). Then there's Minnesota, an inept organization who mangled every step of the team-building process but ended up with Karl Anthony-Towns through dumb luck.

If the Blazers hope to avoid stalling out as a perennial seventh-seed, tough personnel decisions will have to be made in the near future. While Lillard is locked in through 2020-21, Crabbe and Leonard are restricted free agents after this season. And McCollum will likely command a max deal after next year.

At the moment, though, Portland is reveling in the excitement of an unexpected playoff run—and of proving their doubters wrong. "I've been enjoying every second of it," said Davis. "I think we do some special things here with the two-headed monster we've got, and we can obviously add more pieces to that. I can't wait to look back, five years from now, and see how far we've grown and the things we've accomplished together."