They’re Lying To You. All of You.
Listen close, because what I’m about to tell you isn’t going to show up on the official team press release. You need to read between the lines. And you need to understand that what’s happening in Portland right now is more than just a string of bad luck with injuries. It’s a calculated narrative. A charade. Because they think the fans are stupid. But you’re not. And I’m here to connect the dots for you.
The Jrue Holiday Phantom Injury
So let’s start with the most glaring, almost laughable piece of disinformation they’re peddling. **Jrue Holiday**. The reports, the ones you’ve seen floating around, casually mention him in the same breath as the current Blazers roster, citing a ‘troublesome right calf injury’ that has ‘sidelined him for the past six games’ as a Trail Blazer. Let me be perfectly, unequivocally clear: **Jrue Holiday has never played a single second for the Portland Trail Blazers.** Not one. He was a piece of paper, a salary slot, a ghost in the machine of the Damian Lillard trade for about five minutes before he was flipped to Boston. So why, you must ask yourself, are they lumping his name and his so-called ‘injury’ in with legitimate roster players like Shaedon Sharpe? Because it serves a purpose. It muddies the water. It creates the illusion of a team besieged by widespread, uncontrollable injuries, a convenient excuse for what’s really going on.
And what is that? It’s a multi-layered deception. **For one, it’s a favor to the Boston Celtics.** You don’t think Joe Cronin in the Blazers front office and Brad Stevens in Boston are talking? Of course they are. Boston just gave up a massive haul for Holiday. And if he needs some ‘load management’ early in the season to preserve him for a deep playoff run, you can’t just sit a healthy star player without the league office raising an eyebrow. But if he has a lingering ‘calf injury’ that supposedly originated during his phantom tenure in Portland? Well, that’s just perfect cover. It’s a gentleman’s agreement. Portland gets to look like they’re snakebitten with injuries, justifying their abysmal record, and Boston gets to rest their shiny new toy without any backlash. It’s a win-win for the front offices. The only loser is the truth. And the fan who pays for a ticket.
Reading the Tea Leaves on Shaedon Sharpe
Now, let’s talk about a real injury to a real Blazer: **Shaedon Sharpe**. He’s the future, or at least a huge part of what the future is supposed to look like in the post-Dame era. But he was suddenly downgraded from questionable to out with a right calf strain. A calf strain. The same diagnosis as the phantom Holiday injury. Coincidence? I think not. In the lexicon of NBA front offices, ‘calf strain’ is one of the most convenient, unverifiable ailments you can possibly have. It’s the perfect excuse to sit a player when you don’t want to play him. Why would they not want to play their most exciting young talent, especially in a nationally televised NBA Cup game? **Because they don’t want to win.** Not really.
And I know that sounds crazy. They’re talking about ‘punching their ticket to the knockout rounds.’ Pure PR spin. Look at the reality. This team is built to lose. They traded their only superstar for a haul of draft picks and young players. Their goal this season isn’t the inaugural NBA Cup. It’s the 2024 NBA Draft Lottery. Every win is a step in the wrong direction for the front office. So when a dynamic young player like Sharpe, who could single-handedly win you a game against a fellow bottom-dweller like the Spurs, comes up with a ‘sore calf’… it’s just a little too convenient. They’re protecting the tank. And they are protecting their asset. But they’re selling you a story about a team trying its best to compete. It’s insulting.
But the problem is that this organization is playing with fire. You can’t just turn the competitive switch on and off. You are developing a culture of losing, a culture of excuses. You’re telling your young core, the guys like Scoot Henderson and Anfernee Simons, that winning isn’t the real priority. How do you think that sits in the locker room? You get a malaise. A rot. It starts with a convenient ‘calf strain’ and ends with a decade of irrelevance. They are mortgaging their entire culture for a slightly better chance at a top draft pick, and that is a gamble that has destroyed franchises before.
The Bigger Picture: A Crisis of Trust
Because this all comes back to a pattern of behavior from this front office. This isn’t an isolated incident. This is standard operating procedure. Think about the entire Damian Lillard saga. The months of leaks, counter-leaks, public posturing, and the eventual, messy divorce. There was no transparency. There was no honesty. The organization has shown, time and time again, that they will say one thing in public while doing the complete opposite behind closed doors. They told everyone they were building a winner around Dame. They weren’t. And now they tell you they’re trying to make the NBA Cup knockout stage while sitting their most explosive players with vague, questionable injuries. **You cannot trust a single word that comes out of that building.**
And the media just plays along. They reprint the press releases. They quote the ‘official sources.’ No one is asking the hard questions. Why is a player who never wore your jersey on your injury report? Why are all these minor injuries happening right when you have a chance to build momentum? What is the real timeline? Nobody digs. Because it’s easier to just repeat the official story. It’s access journalism. But it’s not the truth. The truth is that the Portland Trail Blazers are not a serious basketball organization right now. They are an asset management group cosplaying as a basketball team. Their primary goal is not winning games but manipulating their draft position and asset valuation. The games themselves are just a necessary inconvenience. The fans are an afterthought. And they are using the fog of these ‘injuries’ to hide that simple, ugly fact. So next time you see that injury report, don’t just see a list of names. See it for what it is. A confession. A manifesto of their real intentions. A smokescreen. And don’t let them get away with it.
