National Basketball Association

Analysis: The Trail Blazers' patience has been rewarded

Updated Mar. 5, 2020 2:19 a.m. ET

Bravo, Portland.

Bravo.

Doing the right thing isn't easy in the NBA, where patience is a rare virtue. The Trail Blazers were swept in the first round of the 2017 playoffs. They got swept again in the first round last season. Portland had lost 10 consecutive playoff games going into this year. Ordinarily, that's a recipe for firings, trade demands and roster dismantling.

Instead, the Blazers stayed the course.

And their reward is a trip to the Western Conference final, starting Tuesday against two-time defending champion Golden State.

"It speaks to the character of our organization and what we've become," All-Star guard Damian Lillard said.

The Blazers have become a model of consistency.

They could have gone the other way. A lot of teams have gone the other way.

Neil Olshey, the Blazers' general manager, took an uncommonly measured approach last season and kept Terry Stotts — currently the fourth-longest-tenured coach in the NBA. Lillard stayed committed and didn't stomp his feet or force a trade like so many other players in his situation have done or tried to. CJ McCollum, Lillard's backcourt partner who carried them Sunday with 37 points, doesn't mind that he could get more shots elsewhere.

"This is arguably the biggest win that we've had in the franchise for a long time," Stotts said after Sunday's Game 7 win at Denver — the first Game 7 road win in team history. "To be a part of it, to do it the way we did, I'm thrilled."

In a lot of ways, Sunday epitomized what the Blazers have done in recent years. They got down 17 early on the road in a Game 7. They battled, chipped at the deficit, eventually found the right combination of things that worked and didn't panic.

"Just stay with it," Stotts said. "Trust was the biggest thing."

He was speaking of Game 7.

He could have meant the last two offseasons.

Trust takes time to build, and the Blazers now have it from top to bottom. This is how close-knit they are: After the game, Lillard lauded teammates, coaches, the training staff, the front office, the team's security and the members of the sports media relations staff. He forgot nobody.

"Everybody we see every day, everybody's invested in what we've created," Lillard said.

Some teams should be taking notes.

So should some players.

This is an era in which teams spend years tanking instead of competing, yet still charge plenty to fans willing to come see their inferior product. An era where a bad team like Phoenix somehow decides after one year that a well-regarded coach like Igor Kokoskov needs to be fired — a move that means Devin Booker will start his fifth NBA season playing for a fifth different coach. An era where an elite player like Anthony Davis can pursue a trade with a year and a half left on his contract in New Orleans, starting a circus that became a massive problem for both the Pelicans and the Los Angeles Lakers.

The Blazers didn't demand that someone else fix their mistakes.

They did it themselves.

Olshey knew Portland's roster was flawed after being swept by Davis and the Pelicans last season, that it wasn't deep enough to handle injury issues. So he took a chance on Seth Curry, Warriors star Stephen Curry's brother who wasn't in the league last season, and signed him over the summer. He swung a trade in February and got Rodney Hood to fortify the bench. He fought off plenty of other clubs to sign Enes Kanter when he was freed by the New York Knicks — and that move proved enormous after center Jusuf Nurkic went down with a broken leg.

But the moves Olshey didn't make the last two summers are part of why the Blazers are here now. So are the moves he made three months ago. So, too, are the moves he made four years ago when the Blazers were rebuilders after LaMarcus Aldridge and three other starters left.

"We had the roster turnover four years ago and everybody was quick to shoot us down, count us out," Lillard said. "And at that point, we didn't know for sure what direction we were going to go in."

Now they know.

They're heading to Oakland and the Western Conference final.