The Portland Trail Blazers have found a new star.
Damian Lillard is out for the season, Scoot Henderson has yet to take the court, Yang Hansen is still very much a work in progress, and Toumani Camara is struggling to get his shots to fall. Yet no matter who his running mates have been this season, Deni Avdija has risen to the occasion.
In June 2024, the Blazers took a big swing to get Avdija, trading two first-round picks and a pair of second-round picks to the Washington Wizards to bring the then 23-year-old to Portland. At the time, he was considered something like a Swiss Army knife – good at a lot of things but not outstanding at any.
To some degree, that trend has continued in Portland: Some nights he has found himself as the offensive facilitator, some nights he’s played in the low post, other nights he’s lurking on the perimeter to knock down three-pointers. The only question surrounding Avdija was not if he could be good; he already was during his time in Washington. It was whether or not he would justify the price the rebuilding Trail Blazers paid in draft capital to bring him.
This season, though, he has taken all of his skills to the next level and proved that the answer to that question is a resounding yes. Whatever role the 6’8 forward has found himself in this year, he has thrived.
By practically every metric, he has taken a huge step forward this season, taking him from a savvy acquisition in the summer of 2024 to a major steal. When he was acquired in a pre-draft trade from Washington, he was considered a rangy wing with the ability to score in the teens and knock down three-pointers, while being a team-friendly contract. This season, he has blossomed into a star.
He’s scoring at a career high pace of nearly 26 points per game, has matched his career high in three-point percentage while attempting almost 30% more attempts per game, and has turned into an effective facilitator, nearly doubling his previous assists average. The scary thing is that he can be an even better distributor than the stats reflect. So far this season, Avdija has averaged 6.1 assists per game. However, he’s averaging nearly 14 potential assists per game, meaning that if any of his teammates could shoot, he’d be averaging a double-double every single night.
The Trail Blazers as a team are struggling to shoot at all this season. While they play at a blistering pace of over 102 possessions per 48 minutes and attempt the fifth-most three-pointers in the league, they struggle to put that pace or volume of shot attempts to good use, with the fifth-worst effective shooting percentage in the league.
On a team struggling to shoot, Avdija has been one of the shooting stars, with his three-point percentage being at a career high.
If there is a stat to fill for the Trail Blazers, Avdija has done it this season.
With a pair of triple-doubles this season, Avdija has four in his brief Portland career, meaning that after just 94 games in a Trail Blazers uniform, he’s tied for fifth in team history in triple-doubles. Avdija’s latest scoring outburst propelled the Trail Blazers to a 122-110 win in Cleveland on Wednesday and allowed him to show off another new element of his game. He scored 27 points, with 16 of them coming from the charity stripe on a night he didn’t have his usual shooting touch. Over the last week, Avdija has made getting to the rim and drawing contact a priority, with four of his top five games for free throw attempts this season coming in that span.
In a season where the Blazers have needed a utility tool to patch holes all over their lineup, Avdija has fit the bill. The fact that he has managed to do so and has done it at an All-Star level of play should terrify the team’s future opponents. Currently, Portland is playing in the most makeshift of makeshift systems. They have an acting head coach, new ownership, zero healthy point guards, and a back half of the roster that should be playing heavy minutes for the Rip City Remix but are instead having to log significant time on the floor in the NBA due to the team’s pile of injuries. When Avdija can take the floor with an actual NBA-caliber lineup consistently, he is precisely the type of player who can help take a team to the next level. That happens to be just what the Trail Blazers, a team that has been stuck wandering in the lottery wilds for the past six seasons, need.
While the Trail Blazers are continuing to make strides, much of this season is now about next season, no matter where they finish in the standings. Next season will be their first in new ownership, likely the first under a new coach, and one where hopefully they have a fully healthy Scoot Henderson and a healthy and rejuvenated Damian Lillard, and another year of developing Donovan Clingan and Yang Hansen, and hopefully allow Shaedon Sharpe and Toumani Camara to find their groove once again.
While this season has proven to be one filled with significant changes, the Trail Blazers have discovered that they have a constant presence who can play like an All-Star in whatever role they need him to fill as they climb back into contention.
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