With the 2021 NBA Trade Deadline looming, and with the recent news from the San Antonio Spurs about their agreement to part ways with LaMarcus Aldridge after nearly six seasons, it's safe to say that the 15-year veteran's career is nearing its quiet end. While he was never the most spectacular player on the court, LaMarcus Aldridge was a bonafide star with the Portland Trail Blazers and San Antonio Spurs and will retire as a legend for the Blazers.

As Portland's all-time career leader in rebounds and its third all-time leader in points (second before Damian Lillard came into his own), Aldridge will, at career's end, forever be a Blazer to NBA fans. It would be surprising if his #12 jersey doesn't eventually hang from the rafters of the Moda Center after his career is done, which makes these past few years in San Antonio even weirder and sadder for him.

When Aldridge left Portland in that fateful summer in 2015, he left as an enigma. Here was a homegrown superstar that was quiet, thoughtful, and private, befitting of the small market fans who grew to love him as the co-star of the Brandon Roy glory days, who had hoped to see him continue his quiet brilliance as the rise of another co-star in Damian Lillard began.

And yet, that same quiet star, that bedrock of Portland that managed to not just survive the team's collapse after Brandon Roy's early retirement, found himself paradoxically jealous of the louder, flashier stars that he felt that he was dwelling in the shadows of.

First Roy. Now Dame. When would it be Aldridge's time?

In retrospect, this argument makes even less sense. When he was in Portland, at least his co-stars played different positions. The last comparable star to him in role was Bill Walton.

In leaving to San Antonio, who had its own budding superstar in Kawhi Leonard at the time, whose front office and coach were and are famous for demanding quiet dominance and zero special treatment for their players, Aldridge chose instead to fling himself into the long shadow of Tim Duncan, who wasn't even retired yet.

Sure, his departure came with perks — eight digits' worth of perks per season, in fact. But for what?

Of course, hindsight is 20/20. For all Aldridge knew, the Spurs were poised for another decade-long run at the top of the NBA mountain, and given how quiet his new co-star would be, maybe the feelings of jealousy that had festered in him at the rise of both Brandon Roy and Damian Lillard would not rear their ugly heads as much.

How could he have predicted that Zaza Pachulia's foot would land where it did? That Kawhi would land in exactly the wrong way? That San Antonio would lose its heir apparent to Tim Duncan in less than three years?

LaMarcus Aldridge didn't know. Nobody knew.

But, with all of the wealth of talent around him, with the apparent sustained savvy of the Portland front office, LaMarcus Aldridge could have avoided all of that drama. If only.

Imagine the Portland Trail Blazers, with LaMarcus Aldridge and Jusuf Nurkic manning the middle and a top three backcourt in the Western Conference Finals against a Golden State team without Kevin Durant. Imagine if Dame and CJ weren't gulping air at carrying the entire offensive load for that team. Would Golden State have had an answer for them? Who knows.

That being the case, Aldridge would have gotten all the glory he'd left for in dropping bucket after bucket on the immortal Warriors, leading Portland to its first NBA Finals since Clyde Drexler's prime.

Instead, LaMarcus Aldridge will be remembered as the latest chapter in Portland basketball's decades-spanning story of ‘what if's'.