Portland Trail Blazers Media Day has come and gone. Training camp is now underway. This time of year always brings optimism. Plans are untested, opponents completely unfought. Injuries usually aren’t cropping up. The plays all look good in practice. Everyone talks about what will happen theoretically if everything goes well, unfettered by the reality of actually playing 82 hard-fought games.
Yesterday we got the report from practice: one of the goals for the team this year is to win 50 or more games.
Fair enough. It’s a worthy marker, a definite improvement over 42 last season. But can they actually do it? That’s the subject of today’s Blazer’s Edge Mailbag.
Dave,
Is 50 wins doable? Do you see us getting a higher seeding and advancing to the second round at least? I’m looking at Dame, Ja, and Deni with Tou and Clingan backing them with defense and it seems like a great team to me. They could be a scary one. Do you agree?
Paul
If Deni Avdija is healthy, I do see 50 wins as a possibility. Analysts are 100% correct that teaming Damian Lillard and Ja Morant in the backcourt is going to bring defensive issues. But they’re also skipping to the final chapter of the story. The opening pages hold a slightly different reality: defense doesn’t matter as much in the regular season. Games come fast. Teams aren’t overly prepared. Sometimes they don’t even care that much. Besides, half of the opponents are mediocre or worse, with holes just as big as your team’s. It’s not a cakewalk. (This is the NBA, after all.) But offensive teams can skate by outscoring opponents as long as they generate sufficient possessions to score in volume.
If the Blazers fall to a flaw during the regular season, it probably won’t be defense. It’ll be three-point shooting. If you can’t hit threes, you have to generate more buckets just to keep up. Fouls against the veterans will compensate for some of it if they bother to drive, but that’ll still leave the Blazers climbing out of a hole every night. The Achilles Heel of this scoring team won’t be lack of defense, it’ll be getting outshot.
That might not happen often enough to keep Portland from reaching the 50-win plateau. I’d say that, all things being equal, I’d put them in the 43-48 category. Plus or minus 10% on that wouldn’t surprise me or anyone. That takes them as low as 39 or as high as 52. For reference, that’s the same range that the Houston Rockets, Minnesota Timberwolves, Phoenix Suns, and Kawhi-Leonard-led LA Clippers occupied last season. That’s not too bad.
The real question isn’t whether the Blazers can win 50. The question is whether it will actually matter.
Everything changes when you get to the NBA Playoffs. You don’t play many teams, but one. They’re prepared to exploit you, with nothing to do for a solid two weeks but get ready for this specific matchup. And all those opponents are good. At that point, the gaps in your attack (or in this case, defense…and shooting…and forward depth…) show in a way they didn’t before. And all the Jrue Holidays in the world probably won’t be enough to cover for it.
The reason these preseason proclamations make a difference is that they’re so far from the reality of the end of last season and even farther from the impending end of this one, the bright dawn at the start of a grey day. Next April, nobody will remember what the Blazers said in September. If they do, they’ll probably be able to credit them with reaching their goal of 50 wins, or at least getting close. That credit won’t buy much compared to the teams that actually advance through the postseason.
There’s plenty of time between now and then, though: time for development, time for roster moves. The Blazers are one “two guards and draft picks for an accomplished forward” trade away from being a locked-in roster. We can’t judge this year’s team until February.
Until then, the Blazers seem to me like a mom-and-pop restaurant with a signature dish that’s fantastic, but you have to know what to order on the menu otherwise it’s not worth it. We’re not talking three Michelin stars here. You’ve got to get the meatloaf. The mac-and-cheese is ok too. If you order anything else, you’ll find as good or better elsewhere. And stay the hell away from the crab salad.
Is that good enough to stay viable? It sure is. Whether you actually recommend that restaurant depends on the experience you’re looking for. A nice, homemade meal? You can get it there. Bring visitors sometimes? Sure! Are you going to eat there every night and put it in the guidebook with the great places to eat? Probably not. Guy Fieri would Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives it just fine; Gordon Ramsay would vomit.
That’s about where the Blazers are in 2026. It’s a lot better than the Awful House slop they were serving during the tanking years! That’s for sure. But their goals, and probably their roster, need some adjusting before they get to a level in which they actually matter to more than Portland fans.
Thanks for the question! You can always send yours to blazersub@gmail.com and we’ll get to as many as possible! We always appreciate the submissions!
