Crystal Ballers

The next National Basketball Association season is still four months away. But the Portland Trail Blazers as you know them right now seem moments from vanishing. 

July 1 marks the beginning of free agency—the period when players can shop their talents to the most attractive suitor. 

And most of the Blazers' most beloved players are thinking about cheating on us.

"Iron Man" guard Wes Matthews and wizard-loving center Robin Lopez have their eyes on the open door. Nicolas Batum was exiled via a trade to Charlotte last week.

As good as these players are, they'll always be part of the Aldridge era, and that's a time that appears to be over.

LaMarcus Aldridge, the Blazers' second-leading career scorer, appears to be one his way out, to Los Angeles sunshine, Texas tax-sheltering, or Canadian free medicine.

That leaves the Blazers with point guard Damian Lillard at its core—and little else but to see what happens.

At the beginning of the 2014-15 season, this would have seemed unimaginable. The Blazers went 30-8 to start the season, employing an effective ball-movement and 3-point-shooting attack. 

But the team limped a little in the new year, then crawled to the finish line after Matthews tore his Achilles' tendon. Marc Gasol and the grit-'n'-grind Memphis Grizzlies mauled the Blazers in a brutal first-round playoff series. 

Should you mourn? Absolutely. You saw Inside Out: Sadness and happiness live together in the same orb, and you'll never reach the latter without indulging the former. 

But do not despair, for the world is moving on all around you. Star players have left before: Walton in a rage, Drexler in a calculation, 'Sheed in a hazy divorce.

You stare out the window, you sigh, but the team keeps playing, and you learn to love once more. 

Here's why that will happen to you all over again:

1. THE PAST WASN'T THAT GREAT. 

Aldridge is an excellent player who last season played through a thumb injury for several months. But c'mon. This is the newly hypermodern, smaller and faster, Golden State Warriors-style NBA. A big, jump-shooting power forward who openly refused to play center or take 3-pointers wasn't going to be the one to bring Portland out of the Western Conference death labyrinth.

And the Blazers starting unit was terrific, but it had peaked. It was either the fast ending (everyone leaves, you weep for a moment) or the slow one (everything slowly falls apart and you weep for a year). Don't you prefer the former? 

2. MONEY. 

If it were up to me, the Blazers would stay in this condition forever, with $41 million in beautiful, empty salary-cap space—the money they can spend on free agents. Once they sign someone, it will just be all mucked up—a player with flaws standing in what was once perfect nothingness.

But that nothingness could, maybe, possibly, get turned into something big. 

That could mean a good player, like Danny or Draymond Green, or even Kevin Love, if he can get past the shovelfuls of hate his hometown tossed on him over the years. It's also possible to cut a deal with a team to take a terrible contact off its hands and gain a high draft pick. 

3. FINANCIAL SHENANIGANS.

Any team that wants Aldridge will have to clear out some players in order to afford him. He and the Blazers could agree on a deal that in effect trades him to the team he wants to play for in exchange for a busload of players.

This happens all the time in the NBA. So why is this good for Portland? 

Aldridge gets what he wants, and his new team—the San Antonio Spurs, for example— gets to stay under the NBA's salary cap and maintain some operating flexibility. Portland can win by getting talent—say, Spurs center Tiago Splitter.

4. YOUTH AND BEAUTY.

Lillard can't drag the Blazers into Western Conference relevance by himself, but everything he's done so far implies that he will certainly try. With Lillard, the Blazers will lose while shooting a glorious rain of two-steps-behind-the-line threes every night. 

The team will still have center Meyers Leonard or guard C.J. McCollum, and new acquisition Mason Plumlee, a featureless brick of a center who can still run, set a decent pick and play competent defense. They might be bad—but tickets will be cheap, and there will be a fun show every night.

5. THE FRONT OFFICE IS NOT A HORRIFYING MESS.

A team can be needlessly horrible for a very long time. The Blazers won't face that problem. Even when the team is bad, skilled people will put in a good-faith effort to make it excel again. Ownership is willing to spend, and general manager Neil Olshey is a best-of-both-worlds scouting fiend who still understands how to build a modern 3-point gunning team. The Blazers managed to be such a team even with 3-point-allergic Aldridge taking a big share of the team's shots.

6. STEVE BLAKE IS GONE. 

He was a not-very-good player, loved by announcers and dads for being an older, bald white man who sucked at basketball, just like them. And don't worry, Blake is too old to come back a fourth time—right?

7. LIFE, DEATH AND REBIRTH ARE THE NATURE OF ALL THINGS.

A tree looks resplendent in spring and summer. Then autumn comes. Leaves fall, decompose, feed the roots. The sun returns and the tree grows lovely once more. Maybe those leaves will be so big and beautiful that the tree wins the NBA title, and the tree's city has a big, embarrassing party in the streets that ends with someone's car getting thrown into the Willamette. 

WWeek 2015