Why did the Trail Blazers leave Jerome Kersey unprotected in 1995?

[SelakStreet]

In the expansion draft involving the Toronto Raptors and Vancouver Grizzlies that is? I mean, sure, Kersey's last 2-3 seasons with Portland saw him begin getting phased out in favor of Clifford Robinson, especially in '94 and '95 when he was a full-time bench player playing behind Cliffy and Harvey Grant.

even when the core of the early '90s Blazers teams declined, Portland was still technically a playoff team all the way up to 2003. Surely, Kersey never played for the Toronto Raptors and then went on to have a productive year each with the Warriors and the Lakers. With the Warriors, Kersey started the most games at small forward since Chris Mullin had been injury prone during the '93-'96 days; and in his one year with the Lakers, Kersey also got to be the starting small forward for the better part of his Laker season as injuries thinned their roster to the point that they had no choice but to start him.

Kersey was still a hard working player, even when he came out of his prime. Both him and Porter surely would've been an awesome locker room guys for the Jail Blazers as the only holdovers from the Drexler core. Some of their star players during the Jail Blazers era were unruly during the late 90s/early 2000s.

[penbeast0]

He was the 22nd highest paid player in the league in his last year with Portland. That's star money, more than Karl Malone or Reggie Miller. They probably just felt his production wasn't worth the money.

He then went and played for relatively minimal salaries the rest of his career so for the teams he went to he was better value for money.

[Ainosterhaspie]

Age? He was 32. Hard to expect very many more productive seasons at that age. I could see hoping that would make him unappealing and that he might slip through untouched.

[Red Robot]

I think the above answers pretty well cover it, but also:

Portland was set on a rebuild at that point. They'd just come off a pretty terrible season by their standards and Drexler and Porter were already gone. Portland's new exec was 'trader' Bob Whitsitt--a very aggressive GM not afraid to move parts around. He would not have been as attached to the Blazers' previous core. There was a sense by then that the old team had failed, and at that point they may have valued change for its own sake.

That said, I kind of agree Kersey was a nice presence as a vet even when he wasn't much above replacement level on the court. In hindsight, I think it's pretty clear that the millennium-era Blazers needed stability, even at the cost of talent.

[Laimbeer]

I didn't have this topic on my bingo card.

[SHAQ32]

Kersey didn't have a high enough VORP/RAPM for this section to formulate an opinion.

[rand]

I didn't have this topic on my bingo card.

OP specializes in this, which I appreciate because it brings me down some memory lanes I haven't traveled in a long time (if at all).