Today marks the start of the 2025-26 NBA regular season schedule. The Portland Trail Blazers open their new campaign Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. Pacific against the Minnesota Timberwolves at the Moda Center. In preparation for the big event, we preview the upcoming season.
Today we’re going to tell you about all the changes the Blazers have undergone this summer. If the last time you paid attention was in April, here’s what you missed.
In June, the Blazers signed Chinese center Yang Hansen. (approximate pronunciation: Yong Honsen) He is 7’1 and 20 years old. Portland shocked the league by moving up from 11th place to select him 16th overall. Since then, he has shown promise and a lot of charisma.
Hansen’s court vision is incredible for a seven-footer. He passes with creativity and enthusiasm. He is also fast for his size when running down the field. The Blazers might have visions of poor man Nikola Jokic in their future. If his three-point shooting and footwork improve a bit, Hansen should become a potent offensive weapon.
On defense, Hansen collects fouls like they were Magic the Gathering cards. He’s not a good rebounder. He sometimes feels overwhelmed when forced to defend on the perimeter.
Hansen still has a long way to go before becoming a complete player, but he’s fun to watch and possesses a resilience that Blazers fans should love.
Speaking of love…rookie Caleb Love joined the team as a two-way player alongside Frenchman Sidy Cissoko. There’s a good chance both will see some serious time with the Rip City Remix, but early season injuries could push them out of the running. Love is known for its offensive will. He’s never met a shot he doesn’t like. Cissoko has a big body and moves around the court like a jack of all trades.
Portland acquired center Deandre Ayton this summer. He is now a member of the Los Angeles Lakers. They also traded Anfernee Simons to the Boston Celtics for Jrue Holiday.
In doing so, the Blazers lost two of their top four scorers. Holiday will help their defense and their playmaking. They need both at the guard spots, so that’s good. He’s no longer the scorer he once was, and at 35 years old, it remains to be seen if he can play big minutes with speed and energy.
Also making headlines: The Blazers used their mid-level cap exception to sign Damian Lillard after the Milwaukee Bucks waived him to make room for Pacers center Myles Turner. Lillard is recovering from an injury. He is not expected to play this season. You will probably see him on the bench during his rehabilitation.
Cumulatively, this amounts to a different roster for Portland. Whether it’s better remains to be seen.
Guard Shaedon Sharpe has been at the team’s epicenter during training camp and the preseason. His shot seems more confident, his movements more aggressive. He relies on the pull-up at the foul line and it pays off. This previously reliable perimeter move distracts defenders, allowing him to get to the rim when they play closer to him.
The signs are promising for Sharpe. He could be on the verge of becoming an offensive star. The Blazers consequently extended his rookie contract for four more years.
Scoot Henderson is a year behind Sharpe and has a lot to prove. Unfortunately, he tore a hamstring late in the summer and will be out for the first two months of the season. This was a big blow, not only because of the depth chart, but also because of Scoot’s need for confidence and progress.
Center Donovan Clingan looked completely comfortable in his own skin during the preseason. He’s become the rebounding, shot-blocking machine the Blazers expected when they spent a lottery pick on him two seasons ago. He still struggles to patrol outside the lane, but his teammates are covering the space better than ever. We therefore hope that Portland’s defense will be relatively fluid this year.
Toumani Camara and Deni Avdija continue to form the backbone of the squad. Camara’s defense still looks good. He also seems comfortable on the offensive end. Like Sharpe, Camara signed a four-year contract extension this summer.
Avdija was useful in exhibition. The Blazers will have to figure out how to present it. He excels when he has the ball and is a main player, but Sharpe and Henderson’s growth also depends on ball control. Mixing potential stars together will be one of the challenges facing head coach Chauncey Billups and his staff.
It’s a safe bet that if player development doesn’t go well, nothing else will matter. Portland’s present and future are in the hands of Henderson, Sharpe, Avdija, Camara, Clingan and Hansen. Everyone is either infrastructure support or a long way to join this group.
Regardless, the Blazers have entered the “post or perish” phase of their rebuilding project. We’ll see what Professor Scoot and company end up adding to the conversation.
The big question mark in the rotation is veteran forward Jerami Grant. He needs to bounce back from a serious slump last season, in which his offense slumped and his defense was on the floor.
Grant remains virtually tied with Holiday as the team’s highest-paid player. He has been a starter for a long time. Integrating him and restoring his confidence would help the team enormously, but the means to achieve this remain unclear. Camara and Avdija move ahead of Grant in the starting lineup. His own offensive unreliability threatens to keep him from playing. The outlook remains bleak for one of Portland’s key players.
With a new composition and a new stage of development, comes a new style of play for the Blazers. This can be best characterized as: defend hard, run fast, shoot often. You’re going to see Portland press the entire court, disrupt passing lanes, and try to wear down on every turnover and after most rebounds. It’s a frenetic, energetic approach, somewhat in contrast to the placid, percentage-based offense (and even defense) used when Simons, Grant and Ayton formed the core of the roster. Basically, what you saw Toumani Camara do last season, all the Blazers will now do.
Playing a faster, more disruptive style defensively will wear down bodies. Injuries are a constant concern. Besides Henderson, veterans Matisse Thybulle and Robert Williams III were absent during the preseason due to health reasons.
Portland isn’t exactly the most stable team, even under normal circumstances. If they don’t have enough players to raise hell for 48 minutes, opponents will “dope” them, letting the Blazers throw punches until they tire, then run them out of the building for the knockout in the second half.
Depth also plays a role in the equation. Regardless of who dresses, it’s likely the Blazers will need to deepen their ten-man rotation to conserve energy. Players like Kris Murray and Rayan Rupert will need to step up at different times throughout the season. Portland’s mid-to-deep bench is largely untried. This is a concern.
The nightmare scenario for the Blazers is drawing up a blank slate of ten players they want to play, seeing three of them go down with injuries, finding that two or three veterans are unable to keep up for four quarters, and then having to dig in behind a bench that, despite the offseason optimism, looks a lot like the teams they played during their recent winless rebuilding years. Either that or they wear out their key players in the first half of the season (Tom Thibodeau style) and suffer by hitting a wall down the stretch.
Despite new players and a new direction, the Blazers still have a lot of questions to answer this year. During the summer, we rehearsed several of them. Here is a summary. You can click on the links for an in-depth and nuanced discussion of each:
- Can they shoot three-pointers well enough to defeat teams that still focus on the long ball? For all its youth and athleticism, Portland still lacks deep shooters.
- We know the Blazers want to push the pace, but can they avoid giving away more fast break points than they score? It was a problem last season. It stayed that way in pre-season.
- Playing smaller, faster lineups – and having one of two giant centers yet to produce rebounds – will the Blazers be able to stay afloat on the glass? Without rebounding, their good defense is wasted and their offensive opportunities become fewer.
- Will their new defense be enough to compensate for the potential lack of offensive firepower?
- Can they stop turning the ball over so much?
These things are not automatically negative. But the team will need to approach these issues in a way they haven’t before, or all the change will be is a new coat of paint on an unstable wall.
Portland’s goal this year is simple: win as many games as possible. It seems obvious, but this is the first year in a long time where wins matter as much as ping-pong balls.
The consensus seems to be that a good season for the Blazers would find them in the Play-In tournament next April.
The good news: this would represent serious progress for the team.
The bad news: Play-In exists in the Western Conference because it has to. Someone will find themselves between 7th and 10th place. What does this actually mean?
In a way, this echoes the teams led by Portland’s Damian Lillard that faced the Golden State Warriors every year in the playoffs in the late 2010s. Someone was going to lose to the eventual champions. It might as well be the Blazers. That didn’t mean Portland was actually great. It just meant they were next to be ousted that year.
This is a lower level of achievement, but basically the same song. Finishing 7th-10th in the West is a million miles away from competing, or even being good by conference standards.
That said, getting closer to good is a worthy goal for a team that has been anything but over the past four seasons. Surpassing their total of 36 wins from last year would be a great first step. Any final record starting with a “4” would be amazing. It’s a modest bar, but the team will work – and probably race – hard to achieve it.
