With just a handful of games remaining in the season, the 2024-25 season has been strange for the Portland Trail Blazers.
The team opened the season figuring to contend for the Cooper Flagg sweepstakes and a No. 1 draft pick. And for a large part of the first half of the season, they lived up to those expectations. The team appeared lost on both ends of the floor and was routinely blown out as they stumbled to a 13-28 record midway through January. However, the team then went on a tear and won 10 of 11 games in the run-up to the all-star break. That streak had fans wondering if the team could maybe play its way to the play-in tournament, but a 10-14 record since has not allowed the team to make up significant ground.
Now with six games, the Trail Blazers need to figure out how to judge their accomplishments this season. The Trail Blazers sit three games back of the Sacramento Kings for the spot in the play-in tournament. On the other side of the coin, they are one game above the San Antonio Spurs in the standings. Dropping back that one spot would improve the team’s odds by 6% to win the draft lottery.
In what is a microcosm of the team’s season, they are stuck between two options without a clear path to accomplish either. The Kings demolished them when the two teams met last week, and the Spurs are in the process of pulling out all the stops in tanking as hard as they can. When they go head-to-head on Sunday, the game could dissolve in hilarious levels of “resting” players and bizarre substitutions if both teams embrace the tank.
That the Trail Blazers are trying to figure out how best to tank or try and sneak into the play-in tournament is a testament to the team’s up-and-down play this season. The team has seen some development from guard Scoot Henderson in his second season, but he’s still far from the star the team hopes he will be. The team has seen the defensive monster that Donovan Clingan can be, but his offensive game is still raw. The team finally appears to have found its breakout star in Deni Avdija, but now the team needs to figure out who to pair with him. The acquisition of Avdija has proven to be an absolute coup for General Manager Joe Cronin, with the fifth-year player improving across the board offensively this season and proving to be a maestro with and without the ball.
The Trail Blazers need to figure out how to put all the pieces together … or even what pieces should be kept to be able to fit together, and the final half dozen games provide a good chance to do that. You already know what Clingan needs to work on. Henderson is hurt, Deandre Ayton is hurt, Robert Williams is hurt, Jerami Grant is hurt, and Anfernee Simmons is hurt. It would be no surprise if Avdija develops some “soreness” before the Spurs game Sunday, especially if the Trail Blazers lose their next two games. It would also not be surprising if Clingan, Shaedon Sharpe, and Tounami Camara developed some sort of “injury.” Which is ok. The team has already seen what it needs to see from all of those players.
Camara is the team’s defensive stalwart. Sharpe needs to keep working on his defense, and Clingan needs to work on his offense. None of those will be fixed in the season’s final few games. The season’s final few games will be a great opportunity for bench and two-way players to showcase their skills, and for the Trail Blazers to see if they can find a way to get the ping balls to bounce their way this summer. It will be one final chance for them to decide if Chauncey Billups has done enough to stick around, with only an option year remaining on his contract. The team has taken baby steps forward this year, but it’s not enough to compete regularly with even mid-tier teams in the Western Conference. The disparity between where the Trail Blazers are and where even an average team is is stark. The last team in the play-in round will go in with a sub-500 record. The seventh seed- the top team in the play-in round- will probably finish with close to 50 wins. If the Trail Blazers don’t want to be content with a future where, if they squint, they could fight their way as a bottom seed in the playoff round, they still have significant improvements to make
This year was a step forward for the Trail Blazers—not a big step, but a step forward nonetheless. Now, they need to figure out how to turn that baby step into a leap forward.
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