This morning we wanted to bring you a small smorgasbord of early season trends. Some of them will continue. Some of them will probably be early season aberrations. How can you predict which are which? THAT’S the magic of reckless sports journalism-adjacent speculation!
The Blazers will continue to be a top 3 team in pace. Especially with Damian Lillard sidelined for the year, Portland has a bunch of players who like to play fast. They also are an extraordinarily pesky defense whose generated turnovers
translate into instant offense when they want to push. Therefore… they are playing fast. Especially given that there doesn’t seem to be anything pulling them to play slower so long as everyone can keep up (a legit question), there’s no structural reason why they won’t keep running. Verdict: Buy.
Tiago Splitter is a good coach. While he doesn’t have much experience at the helm, he did play for years under the legendary Gregg Popovich. If you could gain coaching skills by osmosis, Splitter would be the Rick Adelman of Phil Jacksons. While the Blazers don’t structurally look a whole lot different than they did under Billups, Splitter has already demonstrated late-game decision-making that makes fans and analysts alike forget that Portland ever had a coach whose name rhymed with Flauntsy Chillups. That said, his decision-making and schemes have yet to be effectively scouted by the rest of the league. For no other reason than the most likely answer is the simplest one, I am assuming that Splitter will not continue winning at a 4:1 clip. Verdict: Sell (for now).
Jerami Grant is BACK. Nothing like being demoted to motivate a person! Our own Adrian Bernecich recently wrote about Grant, who after a year-plus in the wilderness has found his way back to the trail. He still can’t rebound (come ON), but after shooting 37% last year he’s now right around 50% and averaging 7 more points a game in fewer minutes. Will his career-high in effective field goal percentage continue? Probably not, but I am more willing to believe that he will float back to the kind of player Portland thought they were trading for when they got him in 2022. Verdict: Buy.
Deni Avdija is an All-Star. He was pretty good to start last year. He was really good to end last year. And he’s been really good to start this year. With a bevy of career highs and a team whose play style matches his own, Avdija is absolutely thriving. Now one of the very best contracts in the NBA, you don’t even need that caveat to say that he’s one of the NBA’s better players. All that said, 23-6-4 in the Western Conference is VERY good… but even if that continues, he isn’t likely to make the All-Star team unless there are a handful of unfortunate injuries to other players. Verdict: Sell (reluctantly)
Jrue Holiday is having a bounceback year. What Holiday has been doing for Portland goes beyond the box score… but the box scores are looking pretty fresh! After a few years playing for a contender and being injured last year at age 34, the dip in productivity led many to wonder whether he was falling off an age-related cliff. The six-game sample size this season says “no,” and loudly. Holiday has always been a heady player, a hard worker, and one of the very best humans in the league. Given how he has looked (and what the team needs from him), there is no reason to assume he won’t continue producing at a level that is very good and very welcome, but isn’t even that far off what he has years of experience doing. Verdict: Buy.
What do you think? Do you agree? What other trends have you spotted that you think will continue or end? Let us know in the comments!
