This was always a transition year for the Trail Blazers. Carmelo Anthony won’t change that

The Portland Trail Blazers are 4-8, despite Damian Lillard’s torrid start to the 2019-20 season. As Tom Ziller wrote Wednesday, they risk losing a year of Lillard’s prime just one season after advancing to the Western Conference Finals. The year is young, but it’s not that young. This is not going well.

Forty-eight hours later — and two years after losing an attention bidding war for his services — they signed Carmelo Anthony to a non-guaranteed contract.

We should all be thrilled for Anthony, who has a chance to end his career on his terms after ugly exits in Oklahoma City and Houston. The year of exile he suffered was a bit much, even if his own self-reflection could’ve been deeper. Nobody is as good as their best moment or as bad as their worst moment. Truth be told, Melo was already turning into a spot-up player on offense in his final two stints, and he can still play that same role now.

That said, it’d be a mistake to make too much of this specific move from Portland’s perspective. Melo is the brand name, but the real fireworks are still on the horizon. This does little to change the big decisions that are coming down the pike.

For the here and now, there’s little downside to bringing Anthony in. With promising young big Zach Collins out for months, the Blazers had only cast-off Mario Hezonja and aging veteran Anthony Tolliver to play power forward. Anthony shouldn’t be worse than them, and the price to see if he is was immaterial. Portland’s only other option was to move Rodney Hood, an offense-oriented two guard, to power forward. (Also, Hood’s dealing with nagging injuries).

Anthony wasn’t signed to ride in on a silver horse, turn back the clock to 2015, and propel the Blazers back to the West’s elite. He was signed because the Blazers needed someone, anyone, to soak up some portion of 48 minutes at the position. They still have a gaping hole in the frontcourt, even if Anthony becomes a useful player again. It’d be an amazing story if Anthony filled that gap all by himself, but Portland’s decision to give him a non-guaranteed contract is not an indication that they expect him to be that savior.

The more likely scenario is that Portland upgrades the position via trade or other means in season. That was a possibility this summer, and it’s equally possible now, even with Melo in tow.

To project whether that could happen, it’s important to take a step back to the summer and see if for what it really was, not what it was sold as being. Maybe Neil Olshey really believed this was the best Blazers team he’s ever put together, as he said on media day. But his actions and external circumstances don’t really line up with his boastful rhetoric.

Over the summer, Portland elected to part with starting forwards Al-Farouq Aminu and Maurice Harkless. There is a basketball argument that those two players held Portland back in the playoffs because of their shaky shooting. After all, Aminu didn’t even play in the second half of Portland’s Game 7 second-round victory in Denver despite starting the game.

But timing played an important role in their departures as well. Aminu was a pending free agent and Portland was already slated to be pushing the luxury tax with its payroll. He had reached the end of his arc with these Blazers. Harkless, meanwhile, was ultimately needed to help fill a temporary void at center due to Nurkic’s injury without taking any long-term salary back. I’m not saying Portland made the right decision to trade Harkless and Meyers Leonard for Hassan Whiteside, because it’s rarely worth it to add Hassan Whiteside to your team. But I understand the difficult through line Olshey had to walk to find a replacement for his second-most important player last regular season without losing any picks or taking back more salary.

Replacing those two forwards fell to Collins and Kent Bazemore, acquired for Evan Turner in another salary-neutral trade. Collins got hurt, which is unfortunate. Bazemore’s doing fine, and the Blazers haven’t needed Turner because Anfernee Simons is ready. (Just as we said he would be, by the way).

Olshey can say his expectation was to build on last year’s Western Conference Finals appearance, but these are the actions of a team embarking on a transitional year, not one that’s pushing their chips into the middle. Given the circumstances — Aminu’s free agency, Nurkic’s long-term injury, the payroll issues stemming from the disastrous summer of 2016, and Lillard under contract for a loooong time — this should have been a transitional year. It’s played out exactly that way, except with Collins’ injury (awful luck) and Whiteside’s struggles fitting in (not surprising but not that harmful in the long run).

The interesting question is what this year ultimately transitions into. That story is far from written, and Melo’s addition, while interesting, is barely a footnote.

Between Whiteside and Bazemore, the Blazers have nearly $46 million in expiring money that can be traded or rolled over to create a sliver of cap room next summer. They also have all of their future first-round picks, plus a nice collection of prospects in Collins, Simons, Skal Labissiere, and Nassir Little. That’s plenty of ammunition to acquire a marquee long-term frontcourt solution to pair with Lillard, McCollum, and a healthy Nurkic. Kevin Love has been linked for months, but there are other options, whether short-term, (Danilo Gallinari), longer term (Aaron Gordon), or big swings (Blake Griffin, if Detroit struggles). Plus, there’s always the nuclear option of finally breaking up the Lillard-McCollum backcourt, which has become more viable with Simons’ emergence.

That is the moment when Portland’s future will be decided and Olshey’s strategy this summer will be judged. That was true before the season, true at 4-8, and will be true whether Portland turns this around or goes even further into the tank.

Until then, the Blazers need a stopgap to buy them time, and Carmelo Anthony was sitting right there.