Can the Blazers find ‘intrinsic joy’ in a journey that ends with an embarrassing 4-game sweep?

The Portland Trail Blazers were never considered a championship contender this season. Heck, the Blazers haven’t been considered a title contender in decades, really, since the five S’s of Scottie Pippen, Steve Smith, Damon Stoudamire, Arvydas Sabonis, and Rasheed “Sheed” Wallace ruled the Pacific Northwest. Portland has been really good at various times since then, but never good enough to be considered a title threat. The Blazers have won just two playoff series in 18 years.

That’s part of why the Blazers’ various comments about not needing to be a contender to feel satisfied seem so wise. SB Nation’s Paul Flannery went to Portland earlier this season to talk about the team’s superstar Damian Lillard, about title dreams, about enjoying the journey regardless of the endpoint. Everyone seemed to have realistic expectations about how the Blazers’ season would end — not with a parade, but with defeat to a better team — and a healthy outlook on life after losing.

Then Portland got swept in the first round to a lower seed.

When the Blazers were telling Flannery they’d focus on enjoying the journey as opposed to obsessing about an unavoidable end, they almost assuredly saw themselves going out in a (ahem) blaze of glory against the superior Warriors or Rockets. At the very least, they must have expected themselves to put up a real fight whenever they did fall, to acquit themselves in defeat and provide a glimpse of hope for the future. “Maybe with a few tweaks and some injury luck, we can get to the West finals next year, and hey, anything can happen there,” they’d tell themselves.

Getting worked by the New Orleans Pelicans for four straight games won’t allow Portland any such pep talk.

This is what will test the Blazers’ professed philosophy. They can declare that winning in the regular season is enough for them. That might actually be true so long as Portland is being swept by the Warriors in the first round (like last season) or getting a second round gentleman’s sweep by ... the Warriors (like two years ago). But what happens now that the Blazers got embarrassed by a team that most didn’t have going to the playoffs, a team that lost an All-Star at midseason?

How’s that going to work?

Here’s what Portland GM Neil Olshey told Flannery back in March:

“This narrative that if you don’t win a championship then it’s not worth competing, that’s a false premise. There’s got to be an intrinsic joy of watching your team play well and compete. If it’s just about the end result and not about the journey, then what’s the point?”

This is healthy and really how we should all live our lives, but that’s pretty foreign in the sports world. Good coaches get fired, good players get traded, good teams get torn apart because they aren’t good enough to overcome overwhelming odds all the time.

But nothing about that playoff series could possibly have been enjoyable to Olshey, the Blazers players, coach Terry Stotts, or a single Portland fan. The playoffs are part of the journey — the most memorable, undiluted part of the journey — and it was a wholesale disaster. No intrinsic joy can be mined from the rocks that buried the Blazers over the past week. The Blazers did not play well. They did not compete. The journey — at least this portion, the culmination and crescendo of the season’s path — sucked.

Portland’s powers-that-be — we mean Olshey and Lillard really, but also franchisee Paul Allen to whatever degree he’s engaged with the team — will have to decide whether an enjoyable 82-game story was ruined by a hideous 4-game final chapter. Declaring the season fulfilling after that dismantling by the Pelicans is another whole level of mindful peace than what the Blazers have been selling. One surmises that even Portland will reconsider its theory that being good is good enough, no matter what happens in the playoffs.

They may have to reconsider, because the roster offers little flexibility to make substantial roster upgrades without trading a major piece this summer. Portland is already $12 million above the 2018-19 team salary cap with Jusuf Nurkic, Ed Davis, and a few other minor rotations players hitting free agency. Keeping either without trading a rotation player (or the relatively dead salary of Meyers Leonard) would put Portland in the luxury tax.

It’s hard to see how that trade happens. The market for Evan Turner is going to be small given his contract. Mo Harkless could be a chip to move if some other team takes a shine to him, but Leonard is an albatross at $10 million per year. Al-Farouq Aminu is one of the best bargains in the league — Portland could potentially get a roster upgrade or tie him to Leonard’s contract to make space and get a piece back — but his limitations showed in this first-round series.

That means the piece everyone will be looking at is C.J. McCollum. Portland’s defense fell apart against the Pelicans, and the old concerns that having two score-first, defensive-rarely guards came roaring back. The numbers Jrue Holiday put up and the control Rajon Rondo exhibited exacerbated those concerns greatly. Portland won’t be trading Lillard. But McCollum? That’s possible.

After all, Olshey never said that enjoying the journey despite the result meant that you had to keep your core roster the same every year. The Blazers will be a good team so long as Lillard has a few above-average players around him. Portland can manage that while restructuring the nature of its core. But it will probably take a drastic move like breaking up the backcourt to really change the calculus.

Otherwise, whether Portland fans continue to find intrinsic joy in the Blazers’ regular season success and playoff meltdowns is an open question.