Question marks abound as the Portland Trail Blazers approach the 2025-26 NBA season. Portland’s roster is a bristling mix of young talent and veteran experience, looking to find the chemistry to make a leap in the ultra-tough Western Conference. How that’s done is apt to be a “Step 1, Step 2, ???, Profit!” process. Nobody knows what the experiment will look like until sneakers meet hardwood. But that’s not going to stop us from fielding this Blazer’s Edge Mailbag question.
Dave,
If the Blazers find
success this year who is it down to? Can you identify the players who will step up and make the team better? I think we already know the candidates like Scoot and Shae or Yang and Clingan. I’m interested in your personal answer. Which ones specifically are going to be key?
Brian
It’s a tricky question because all of them could be, but not one of them is guaranteed to be. Shaedon Sharpe is probably the surest bet, but he could easily plateau. Scoot Henderson is a wildcard. Donovan Clingan has an effectiveness ceiling he hasn’t shown he can transcend. Yang Hansen we don’t even know about yet. I can’t put my money on any of them yet. Their range literally stretches from “roster cornerstone” to “traded in two years”.
But what if, for these purposes, we went off the board?
I’m going to acknowledge that Sharpe, Henderson, Yang, and Clingan are the biggest potential leaps. I’ll also give a nod to Toumani Camara. He hasn’t stopped growing yet. But have we considered the redemptive potential of the generation just above this one on Portland’s roster?
The Blazers are kind of weird still. 9 of their 15 active roster members have 3 or fewer years of experience. Portland also fields 3 players above age 30 with 11 or more years of NBA service. That leaves just 3 players in the “prime” years of their 5th-10th seasons. For comparison, the Oklahoma City Thunder–youngest team in the league, also World Champions–have 6. The San Antonio Spurs and Detroit Pistons have 5 apiece.
Portland’s three “middle age” players are Deni Avdija, Matisse Thybulle, and Robert Williams III. The commonality between them? All have room for growth.
Thybulle and Williams are obvious. Matisse played just 15 games last season, Time Lord 20. Just showing up would add talent to the rotation.
Avdija took steps forward as a playmaker and floor-runner last season while remaining strong defensively. He’s on the cusp of putting it together and becoming, if not a star, at least a high-level supporting player of the kind that championship team covet. A little better decision making, some ball control, and a couple points of scoring will put him in the center spotlight.
If the Blazers are going to be good, their young players need to develop into solid contributors, with maybe one leaping towards stardom. If Portland hopes to be great, contributions from Avdija, Williams, and Thybulle would go a long way towards making the dream come true.
In the absence of firm convictions about anyone with four years of experience or fewer, I’m going to say that getting the roster that Joe Cronin envisioned when he made the deals for the three prime-aged players–which means having them healthy and reaching near-full potential–could become a significant key for Portland in the coming season. If nothing else that trio could be the scaffolding upon which their younger teammates ascend. In a perfect world, they’d blend together to create depth and a non-stop attack that will be hard for the rest of the league to handle.
Thanks for the question! You can always send yours to blazersub@gmail.com and we’ll try to answer as many as possible!
