Portland Trail Blazers shooting guard CJ McCollum thinks “there would have been a lot of changes in our organization” if Portland lost to the Oklahoma City Thunder in the first-round of the 2019 playoffs.
If the Blazers fell to the Thunder, it would have been the third-straight postseason Portland got bounced in the first-round of the playoffs.
Luckily for the Blazers, star point guard Damian Lillard averaged 33.0 points in the series and helped Portland beat the Thunder in five games.




“If we had lost in the first round again, I think there would have been a lot of changes in our organization, not just players,” McCollum told ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski on the Woj Pod, via Casey Holdahl of Blazers.com. “I think that, with the state and status of the league right now, like where it’s at with the turnaround, how quick things can change — a great year can turn into a bad year and then people hit the switch. We talked about offline on how, some days the owner might wake up and want to fire a coach just because he woke up on the wrong side of the bed or because of a knee-jerk reaction to something that happened. I think a lot of things would have changed.”
The Blazers made it all the way to the Western Conference Finals, where they got swept by the Golden State Warriors.
It was still a successful postseason run, though. Portland gave Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum contract extensions this summer and didn't make any changes in the front office. Terry Stotts is still the head coach, too.