The Blazer’s Edge Mailbag gets filled with questions of all kinds about the Portland Trail Blazers. Yesterday we published one of the lengthiest ones we’ve ever dealt with, completely unedited. (Insider Peek: I edit down most of them pretty severely before publishing.) Today we’re going totally opposite, dealing with one there was no need to edit! Check it out.
Dave,
I’ve read hundreds of your columns over the past ten years. I love the way you describe things. You’re always complete like a long intentional
dinner. Sometimes I just want a snack though!
Here’s my question. Lots of things are going on with the Blazers right now on and off the court. If you would describe the Blazers in just one word what would it be? You can talk about why you chose that word if you want but no cheating! One word please.
Kyle
Challenge accepted.
My word would be “weird”.
I think there’s plenty of justification. Trading for Ja Morant came out of left field, leaving the Blazers with four potential starting point guards, fewer touches for bona fide star Deni Avdija, and still no three-point shooting to speak of. (Their two best three-point shooters from last year’s rotation are gone.) Portland just came off their most successful season of growth in more than half a decade and yet they’re poised for another drastic rebuild in just two years based on their contracts and draft assets. Their recent change in ownership has created more controversy than I can remember since the early 2000’s. Tom Dundon is doing things in different ways than any other NBA owner ever has. Their arena situation is in flux, hanging a dark cloud over the franchise, with the threat of relocation on the horizon.
All of this stuff has made us forget that Portland’s former head coach—technically still getting paid by the team, as he’s only suspended, not fired—got arrested after the first game of the season and is still awaiting trial for gambling charges. An active head coach getting busted and deposed, leading to three different coaches serving in the space of a single year, should be a banner-headline event that’s remembered for ages. Instead it’s like, “Oh yeah. That happened too.”
Last year at this time, my word would have been “growing” or “hopeful”. But we’re smack dab in the middle of the strangest timeline ever, so “weird” will be the word of the summer.
From one point of view, “weird” isn’t the worst thing to be. It leaves room for straightening out and/or surprises. On the other hand, weird NBA teams don’t tend to do well. When you can’t identify what the heck a team is doing besides bumbling and stumbling, dealing with crises and making it up as they go, usually that team is going to suck. This is modern Sacramento Kings or pre-Kevin-Garnett Minnesota Timberwolves stuff, mixed in with a little bit of 2026 LA Clippers to boot. Those teams aren’t known for their successes.
I run nearly every day. Every once in a while, I’ll catch my trailing foot on a curb or a tree root. Time freezes in the exact moment when my brain identifies that my leg should be coming forward for the next forward stride, but my body indicates that my toes are locked onto the obstacle I just hit. In that frozen moment comes a very weird sensation. What’s supposed to be happening, isn’t. I can feel gravity and momentum begin to take hold. I send frantic signals to my back foot to get up here quick, lest disaster befall. Sometimes the blow was glancing and I’m able to recover my stride with just a stumble. Sometimes not, and I fall flat on my face at a full running pace. (That’s always fun, especially when there are people watching.)
It feels to me like the Trail Blazers are in that exact frozen moment when their foot has caught against something, they’re trying to recover, and we’re all trying to see how serious it is. They’re disoriented, in limbo, in an in-between place. The brain says they should be going one way. Reality says it might be going different.
Whether we say, “Woohoo! Nice save!” or, “Ouch!” remains to be seen. In the meantime, I guess we try to make sense of it and pray that their ability to recover works faster than the forces of competitive gravity working against them. Either way, it’s a weird place to be.
If you’ve read these Mailbags at all, you know that the next thing I’m going to do is ask you to share YOUR single word (and explanation) in response to Kyle’s question. What one word would you use to describe the Blazers right now and why? Unpack your thoughts in the comments section below!
If you want to submit your own Mailbag question, you can send it to blazersub@gmail.com. We’ll try to answer as many as we can!
