Portland Trail Blazers Case Study

During the NBA off-season of 2015, professional basketball team, the Portland Trail Blazers lost four-out-of-five starters from the team due to free agency. These players include All-Star power-forward LaMarcus Aldridge, Wesley Matthews, Nicolas Batum, and Robin Lopez. Thus, leaving star point guard Damian Lillard all by his lonesome self. All eyes were on Aldridge during the period of him choosing to either stay in Portland, or leave and devastate all Portland fans. Many rumors were spread among NBA fans and agents about where LA wanted to go. One event that eased the tension between fans was when they heard that the meeting between him and the Los Angeles Lakers did not go well. After days of anxiety from the fans and Aldridge himself, LA decided to go back to his hometown to play with the San Antonio Spurs alongside Kawhi Leonard and Tim Duncan. The aftermath from Rip City fans was quite calm and peaceful compared to when LeBron James left Cleveland to play in Miami in 2010. Aldridge took the 4 year, $80 million contract. The last three starters to part away from the team were shooting guard Wesley Matthews, small forward Nicolas Batum, and center Robin Lopez. Fans agree that letting Matthews go was a good decision since he tore his ACL during a game, which would obviously poorly affect his game this season. Matthews took the 4 year $70

Some humor came out of this. Fans of other teams started to get pictures of Damian Lillard by himself and captioned it, “Trail Blazers Team Photo.” There’s not much left for Lillard to work with. His partner in crime, LaMarcus Aldridge, is gone and the go-to three point shooter has fled to Dallas. Fans expect for Lillard to explode like Russell Westbrook did last season since Westbrook’s sidekick Kevin Durant had been inured out for much of the season. Westbrook was on the verge of averaging a triple-double the whole