It’s difficult to divorce the 2024-25 Portland Trail Blazers from the 2025 NBA Draft.

With a near-generational talent in Cooper Flagg looming as the apogee, there is no doubt next year’s draft is important. Our own Adrian Bernecich wrote as much a few months ago, saying “it would be malpractice by Cronin and his team to double down on the Blazers so-so veterans,” and “the Blazers need to forgo the chance to win a few more games next season so they can win a heck of a lot more towards the end of the decade.”

While I agree, I want to put a finer point on this: The Blazers don’t need to do everything in their power to maximize losses this year so long as they keep their focus on development. It won’t matter anyway.

…PUT DOWN THE PITCHFORKS! I can already name a handful of people smarter than me who aren’t going to take this lying down, but follow my logic. Below are the lottery odds for next year’s draft:

Let’s imagine that the Blazers slightly overachieve this season and win more games than seven other NBA teams (according to ESPN’s Kevin Pelton, the Blazers will win more games than six teams). That puts the Blazers’ odds at the No. 1 pick at 6%. Not great, and less than half the odds they’d have as a bottom three team, but let’s be real: 14% isn’t great either!

Let’s say you were walking down the street, and you pass a cups guy… except instead of following the ball under three cups, he has supernatural speed and is using SEVEN cups. Are you putting money on that?

It wasn’t always this way: After the NBA instituted the draft lottery in 1985 and frozen-enveloped Patrick Ewing to the Knicks, the odds of the worst team winning the first pick fluctuated between 11% and 17% until 1994 when the odds jumped to 25%. It stayed that way for decades until it fell back down to 14% in 2019 where it’s stayed ever since.

If this were 1996, or 2001, or 2017, I’d feel differently. 25% is one in four, just two consecutive coin flips. I would do unspeakable things for the Blazers to have that high of a chance at a potential franchise player.

But 14%? That’s basically calling THREE coin flips in a row. And yeah, I know there are a ton of different ways to illustrate this point (and some of them would erode my argument). That said, I can imagine myself guessing a coin flip, then needing to just guess ONE more and feeling okay about it. When I try to imagine guessing one coin flip, then two in a row… THEN needing to do it again? I get clammy. Sick to my stomach. Never gonna happen.

And that’s where the Blazers would find themselves even if they went 0-82.

Therefore, rather than ONLY maximize losses — which would involve some combination of things that are already going to happen this year with some things that might not without lineup trickery — the Blazers should just focus on maximizing development and trust that the losses will come. And they will. Nobody believes that a team with Anfernee Simons as its best player can be particularly competitive. Also, the trades that are likely to happen (including Simons and Jerami Grant) and trades that will hopefully get done (including Robert Williams III, if he can stay healthy long enough) will NOT just be for the benefit of losses, but will open up the time needed to develop younger players like Deni Avdija (23 years old), Shaedon Sharpe (21), Scoot Henderson and Donovan Clingan (both 20).

I say as much on the latest We Like the Blazers pod with Ryan Whitledge (time-linked below for convenience), if you want to get annoyed with not only opinion but my face and voice:

Enough out of me! What do you think? Should the Blazers eek out every… single… solitary… loss? Or is the natural progression of things going to take care of the overwhelming statistical likelihood that the Blazers get a GOOD pick, just not the TOP pick?