Portland’s expectations are modest, but doubters remain.
The Portland Trail Blazers won 36 games last season, but played .500 basketball after January 1, with 25 wins and 25 losses. While .500 basketball isn’t reason for celebration, there was a lot for Blazers fans to be excited about with their young team. The play and the vibes improved as season went on. The Blazers are surely due to improve this coming season, aren’t they?
The Athletic’s John Hollinger isn’t so sure. In a companion piece to one he wrote earlier about five teams set to exceed their preseason forecasts, Hollinger chose five teams that he thinks will fail to reach projections (subscription required). The Blazers make that unfortunate list along with the New York Knicks, the Boston Celtics, the Indiana Pacers, and the Washington Wizards.
Sportsbooks have set the Blazers over/under line at 34.5 wins. Bettors can choose the over, meaning they think the team will win at least 35 games this season, or the under, betting that Portland will win 34 or fewer games. 34.5 is a place of regression, albeit just by a hair. Hollinger goes further and says that the Blazers are poised to not even reach that line.
Two headwinds blow in the Blazers’ faces as they try to build on an encouraging finish to 2024-25. First, they were fortunate to win as many games as they did with their scoring margin, finishing 22nd in net rating with a margin that normally produces 33 wins. Second, and perhaps more importantly, offseason changes to the roster figure to significantly diminish an offense that was already struggling (23rd in efficiency last season), taking some steam away from what should be a fairly imposing defense.
He goes on to mention the trade of Anfernee Simons and the buyout of Deandre Ayton. The loss of Simons’ scoring is of particular interest to Hollinger.
Now, where do the points come from? Replacing Simons with the 34-year-old Holiday is quite the gamble; Holiday played a very limited role last season (18.1 points per 100 possessions) and wasn’t notably efficient while doing it. With Holiday likely unable to be a full-time point guard, a huge responsibility falls on the shoulders of Scoot Henderson after two fairly forgettable seasons.
His conclusion is that the Blazers will come up short, largely due to a lack of offensive firepower.
Portland is young and feisty and will guard you, but in this rugged West neighborhood, the Blazers need more.
At the risk of putting too much emphasis on small sample sizes, we can look at games last season without Ayton and/or without Simons. Without Ayton, Portland put up a 19-23 record, including two wins over the Timberwolves. That’s a 45% win rate, good for just short of 37 wins if extrapolated over a full season. The alert reader will not that 37 is greater than the over/under line. The Blazers’ record without Simons was a remarkable 8-4, including wins over the Minnesota Timberwolves, Denver Nuggets, and the Los Angeles Lakers. As it turned out, Ayton only played in one game in which Simons did not, a win against the Chicago Bulls. That means that the record without both Simons and Ayton was 7-4. Again, small sample sizes, but enough data to give optimists encouragement.
Two factors apparently not included in Hollinger’s piece is internal growth and Yang Hansen. Blazers fans who are bullish about the upcoming season are surely expecting continued growth from the likes of Deni Avdija, Scoot Henderson, Shaedon Sharpe, Toumani Camara, and Donovan Clingan. Couple their presumed growth with a quick impact from Yang Hansen and it’s possible that Hollinger will have egg on his face.
The next steps to seeing if Hollinger is right or wrong begins with the preseason, starting just two weeks from today on October 8.
Category: General Sports
