brandon roy

Portland Trail Blazers

Trail Blazers great Brandon Roy is recognized by fans during Portland's home game against Golden State.

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Brandon Roy Returns to Moda Center | Dec. 17, 2023 vs. Golden State

Brandon Roy Behind the Scenes | 2023 NBA Draft Lottery | Portland Trail Blazers

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Behind the Scenes with Brandon Roy | 2023 NBA Draft Lottery | Portland Trail Blazers

Casey Holdahl

Greetings from North Portland! With the 2023 Draft Lottery scheduled for Tuesday at 5 p.m. (they moved it up a half hour to facilitate the start of Lakers vs. Nuggets), wanted to get into some of the Trail Blazers' history at the event on the 39th edition of The Brief Case, which you can listen/subscribe to below...

• The nuts and bolts of Tuesday's Draft Lottery and how the Trail Blazers have fared historically at the event

• Brandon Roy trying to rekindle the magic of 2007, in which he was the team's representative when they won the first overall pick

• Roy's comments about his reluctance to return to Portland and why that might be changing

• The upcoming Eastern and Western Conference Finals matchups

And the show ends by hearing from Texas forward Dillon Mitchell, who went through a pre-draft workout in Portland last week.

You can subscribe to the Brief Case on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, IHeartRadio, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Podcast Addict, Podchaser, Pocket Casts, Deezer, PlayerFM. Back with a new Blazers Balcony with Brooke Olzendam Tuesday night after the Lottery, and then an edition of The Brief Case on Wednesday, so now is a great time to subscribe!

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Draft Lottery History On The Brief Case

Greetings from the Oregon coast and northwest Portland. After sitting out the last few weeks, the Blazers Balcony podcast crew of Brooke Olzendam and I, Casey Holdahl, return to record the 86th edition, which you can listen and subscribe to below...

• Damian Lillard being named third-team All-NBA and the presumptive reasons why he didn't get a spot on the first or second team

• The news that Brandon Roy (not Brooke) would be representing the Trail Blazers at the 2023 NBA Draft Lottery, which is scheduled for May 16 in Chicago

• The Trail Blazers hosting six players in their first 2023 pre-draft workout and how that process might expand now that Portland also has a G-League team

• The second round of the 2023 NBA Playoffs

We'll be back with another episode right after Tuesday's Draft Lottery to either celebrate or commiserate, so if you haven't subscribed, now is the time to fix that. Thanks for listening!

You can subscribe to the Blazers Balcony on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Stitcher, TuneIn, Deezer, Spotify, I Heart Radio,  Pocket Casts and Pandora. 

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Third-Team Dame And B.Roy Returns To The Lottery On The Blazers Balcony

The Trail Blazers announced Tuesday afternoon that Brandon Roy, who played five seasons in Portland before injuries prematurely ended what had the makings of a Hall of Fame career, will represent the team at the 2023 NBA Draft Lottery, which will be held on May 16 in Chicago. You might recall Portland bucked the odds to win the Draft Lottery the last time Roy, fresh off of being named the 2007 Rookie of the Year, represented the team at the Draft Lottery. The Trail Blazers had the sixth-best odds of securing the top pick back in 2007, whereas they have the fifth-best odds this time around.

This is the second-consecutive year and just the ninth time in franchise history that the Trail Blazers find themselves in the Draft Lottery after avoiding it for the better part of the last decade thanks to eight-straight playoff appearances. Last year, the Trail Blazers sent Damian Lillard to represent the team at the Draft Lottery in which they had the sixth-best odds of securing the top pick. And while “The Letter 0” has delivered in the clutch on many occasions during the course of his career, Portland would end up underperforming their odds by coming away with the seventh pick. By sending Roy this time, the team is hoping the good luck he brought to the event 16 years ago can be harnessed once again.

Considering that the 2023 Draft will be integral to the team’s plans to improve the roster this summer as a way to build a better roster around Lillard -- they’ll own two first-round picks and a second-round pick regardless of how the Lottery shakes out -- let’s bone up on some of the basics of the Draft Lottery as it pertains to the Trail Blazers.

The 2023 NBA Draft Lottery will be held on Tuesday, May 16 in Chicago, which is where most NBA executives will be with the NBA Draft Combine starting the next day in the Windy City. ESPN will broadcast the Draft Lottery live starting at 5 p.m.

Now, some history. As previously noted, the Trail Blazers have participated in the Draft Lottery eight times -- 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2012, 2013, 2022 -- and have come away with the first, third, fourth, seventh, 10th, 11th and 13th (twice) picks. They have outperformed their odds twice, the first in 2005 when they got the third overall pick while having the fourth-best odds and when they won the Lottery in 2007, the year Roy represented the team, despite having the sixth-best odds.

Portland has underperformed their Lottery odds twice: once in 2006, when they had the best odds yet ended up with the third overall pick (you might recall they came out of that draft with both Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge) and the aforementioned Lottery in 2022 in which they had the sixth-best odds but finished with the seventh pick, which they used to select Shaedon Sharpe (again, that seemed to work out alright). And in four years -- 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2013 -- the Blazers came away from the Lottery with the exact pick their odds predicted.

As for the broader Draft Lottery history, since 1990 (the system has changed multiple times over the years, most recently in 2019 when it was expanded from three to four teams and the odds were flattened to disincentivize blatant tanking), the team with the best odds has won the Lottery seven times. The second-best odds have won six times, including when the Magic took the top spot in 2022, the third-best seven times while the team with the fourth-best odds has never won the top pick. Fifth-best odds has won five times -- that’s the situation the Trail Blazers are in this year -- while the sixth-best has taken the top pick twice. Same goes for the seventh and ninth-best odds, while teams with the eighth and 11th best odds have both won just once. Teams with the 12th, 13th and 14th best odds have never won the Lottery.

Speaking of odds, here are Portland’s percentages going into Tuesday’s Lottery.

Pick 1: 10.5 %Pick 2: 10.5 %Pick 3: 10.6 %Pick 4: 10.5 %Pick 5: 2.2 %Pick 6: 19.6 %Pick 7: 26.7 %Pick 8: 8.7 %Pick 9: 0.6 %

As you can see, the Trail Blazers have a little better than a one in ten chance of getting picks one, two, three or four, to put it another way, they have roughly a 42 percent chance of getting a top four pick. They have just a 2.2 percentage chance of getting the fifth pick, which feels odd considering they finished the season with the fifth-worst record. Then it’s nearly a 20 percent chance of getting the sixth pick and a nearly 27 percent chance of ending up with the seventh pick (and the NBA has you covered if you'd like to know more about the minutia of the Lottery).

So basically, the Trail Blazers have nearly the same chance of getting a pick in the top four -- 42 percent -- as they have of getting the sixth or seventh pick -- 46 percent. That’s nearing coin flip territory. And for the record: Portland cannot finish with a worse pick than ninth, though in this situation, that would qualify as a disaster.

So with so much of Portland’s hopes for next season riding on this year’s draft, it only makes sense to have Roy, the man who was in the building the last time the ping pong balls bounced the Trail Blazers’ way, reprise his role. Past performance might not be a guarantee of future results, but it's better than nothing.

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Roy Returns To The Lottery 16 Years After Bringing Back The Top Pick

admin

PORTLAND, Ore. (May 2, 2017) – In response to media reports about an apparent shooting in California over the weekend of former Portland Trail Blazers player Brandon Roy, team officials have released the following statement:

Nicknamed “The Natural” and still a fan favorite, Roy played five seasons for the Trail Blazers from 2006-2011. He ended his Portland career having averaged 19.0 points in 321 games. Roy is currently the head basketball coach at Nathan Hale High School in Seattle.

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Team Statement on Reports of Shooting Injury Suffered by Former Trail Blazers Great Brandon Roy

With his NBA playing career unfortunately in the rearview mirror at just 32 years old due to a string of knee injuries, former Trail Blazers guard Brandon Roy has moved on to the next chapter of his life. And yes, it involves basketball.

Roy is in his first season as head coach of Nathan Hale High School in his hometown of Seattle, where he's taken his team to a 5-0 start after finishing 3-18 last season. The Blazer legend recently sat down with SLAM Magazine to talk about the end of his NBA career and his transition to coaching. 

Some excerpts from the interview conducted by SLAM's Franklyn Calle:

SLAM: What are some of the lessons you learned from your NBA career that you now find yourself applying to your coaching philosophy and emphasizing to your kids?

Read the entire interview with Roy at SLAMOnline. Nathan Hale High School is set to take part in the Les Schwab Invitational at Liberty High School in Hillsboro later this month. 

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SLAM Magazine Sits Down with Blazer Legend Brandon Roy

It is not easy to get an interview with former Trail Blazer Brandon Roy. After his career was cut dreadfully short due to knee injuries, the 6th overall pick of the 2006 NBA Draft has kept a relatively low profile. You hear every now and then about Roy, who was instrumental in revitalizing the franchise after the "Jail Blazers" years, showing up at various youth basketball tournaments -- he and Damian Lillard hung out for a bit at this year's Les Schwab Invitational -- and he's a regular fixture at events in Seattle, but for the most, he's avoided the spotlight in his retirement.

So kudos to Clippers guard JJ Redick for getting Roy to guest on his podcast for Adrian Wojnarowski's "The Vertical" website. During the interview, Roy and Redick discuss their history together, hanging out in the run up to the 2006 Draft, the NBA's minimum age rule and the new rules heading into this year's draft. And at the end, Roy discusses the end of his career in Portland. It's well worth your time.

For me, the most compelling part comes at the end when Roy discusses how he views his injury-shortened career...

All of the "what could have been" questions are probably why Roy, who was always incredibly gracious dealing with the media, prefers to live his post-basketball life out of the spotlight. It would be hard to move on to the next stage of your life if all anybody ever wanted to talk about was your past, so it makes sense why Roy generally avoids media attention these days (not to mention he was notorious for all but disappearing from the public eye in the offseason while playing for the Trail Blazers). But that just makes it all the more interesting when he does pop back up.

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Podcast: Brandon Roy Discusses The End Of His Career In Portland On JJ Redick's Podcast

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