The Portland Trail Blazers registered a statement win in their 2026-27 NBA campaign last night, defeating Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets 118-110 despite 35 points from Jamal Murray and a near-triple-double from Jokic. The solid, inspiring road win is getting notice across the NBA, particularly from Blazers fans themselves. Portland is now 5-1 on the season, a great start for a team many overlooked in the Western Conference.
Predictably, a certain amount of cautious optimism is starting to creep
into the thinking of Blazers fans, as evidenced by this submission to the Blazer’s Edge Mailbag. Let’s take a look.
Dave,
After [last night’s win in Denver] I’m starting to believe! 5-1 is legit. A road win against a team as good as Denver is legit. Do you think this team is legit? I could get used to being at the top of the standings.
John
I mean, as legit as it gets in six games? Everything you’ve seen actually happened. They have a couple of real, quality wins salted into a great overall record. You can’t take away anything from them, and who would want to? This is great!
I think one thing we can say pretty confidently is that this feels like a team now rather than just a collection of players. That’s a little abstract, I know, but it still matters.
For the last few years, the Blazers haven’t been deep, haven’t been that talented, and really had nothing to play for or coalesce around. Individual players have developed. Some of them have learned to shine. But the roster and its agenda have been fractured. You could see it when the team got pressured, either by good opponents or internal failure. They would either roll over and give up or they’d devolve into individual performances and agendas.
So far this year, the Blazers appear to be sticking together. Ball movement is pretty constant. Different players produce. They work for the open shot instead of the targeted scorer. Most of all, the defense stays active even when somebody blows a play or doesn’t give full effort. That’s different than saying the defense is effective. But whatever flaws it has come from organic personnel issues rather than people hanging their heads, pointing at each other, or expecting other people to do the job of covering the play.
We haven’t seen this kind of unity and commitment since maybe 2020…the peak Damian Lillard years. It was waning towards the end of Dame’s first run in Portland. It disappeared entirely during the rebuild.
Part of the credit goes to General Manager Joe Cronin. He’s built a roster that’s serviceable, if not quite balanced and complete yet. Passing the ball matters now because someone at the end of that pass will either take a good shot or more the ball to the next option. That wasn’t so for many years. Defense matters because several people play it well and the holes in the scheme are manageable. Effort and unselfishness pay off now, so there’s more incentive to practice them.
Obviously Head Coach Micah Nori deserves praise too. He’s set up a continuity-based system, then convinced his players to buy into it. He seems to have the right balance of encouragement and caution. It’s less that players are playing their hearts out for him. They don’t have to. The team is as a whole, and they’re performing effectively. This isn’t a venue for heroes who come through spectacularly. Playing decently is just normal, spread across the whole roster.
Sidy Cissoko is a great example of the atmosphere Nori has developed. Cissoko is a good enough player, a bench contributor who’s well-built and smart in his style of play. He’s not a star by any stretch of the imagination. He appears by name in the game plan of zero opponents.
If this were about a collection of individual talents, Cissoko wouldn’t register much. Standing on his own merits, walking into a relative void, he would be like a local karaoke singer stepping onto the American Idol stage. The voice isn’t big enough to meet the moment or fill the space. No matter how nice the song or how earnest the effort, polite applause and, “Next!” is the inevitable result. That’s exactly where the Blazers were before this. The talent wasn’t good enough. Even if they gave the rare, amazing performance, what did it matter? It didn’t lead to wins anyway.
Now Cissoko and his perfectly-nice voice are part of a choir. That’s a completely different realm. It’s ok if you aren’t the loudest soloist. In fact, you don’t want to be. Sticking out ruins the performance. An alto with a good voice, singing the correct notes on key, makes a huge difference to the ensemble sound—both its quality and integrity—even if that alto will never step up and take the mic alone on her own merits.
Portland’s play right now resembles choral music far more than karaoke. It’s not as flashy and splashy as Luka Doncic and the Los Angeles Lakers or the collection of A-list talent that resides in Philadelphia, but it has its own authenticity. Cissoko has been an outstanding part of that, despite being the 9th or 10th option on the roster. Whoever he is, when he hits the stage, it matters.
Right now, at the beginning stages, the question about authenticity is as critical as the “legit” adjective you asked about. Whether the Blazers are legit contenders depends on plenty of things beyond their control. Injuries factor in. The quality of other teams plays a huge role. (And yes, some are far more talented than Portland still.) The Blazers might not be able to make themselves “legit” on their own. But they seem to be displaying an authenticity that will allow them to be the best version of themselves that they can be right now. Hopefully that’s sustainable—because it’s not a special achievement, but endemic to their approach—and thus can be built upon in future seasons.
If the trend continues, it’s kind of a big deal even if the record comes down to earth a little. And let’s face it, two losses will make Portland’s record unremarkable. The season is that new. Current standings matter less than how the team plays in those losses, how they respond to adversity, and whether we’re seeing this same trends hold 68 games into the season as we are at the 6-game mark.
Early on, I’m impressed by the team’s unity and authenticity. That’s the first thing I think of when I survey this year’s squad and the start to the season. And that’s my initial answer to your question.
But we’re not done! There’s more! We’re going to look at statistical points of interest during this hot start tomorrow, opening up another avenue to ask whether the team is “legit”. Stay tuned!
If you want to submit your own Mailbag question, you can send it to blazersub@gmail.com. We’ll try to address as many as possible!
