The Portland Trail Blazers are almost exactly one-third of the way through their 2025-26 regular season schedule. A 10-16 record doesn’t look as good as they’d hoped at this point in the season, but injuries have played a part, and six games under .500 isn’t an insurmountable deficit. Still, it’s fair to call the beginning of the season “mixed”.
While we have a little break in game action, we’re going to take a look at the Good, Bad, and Ugly features of the Trail Blazers start. What factors have shone through the mess and what things have contributed to it?
Deni Avdija
You can’t talk about the opening of the year without mentioning Deni Avdija. He’s been an island in the storm, stepping up to control the ball, push the pace, and pour in points. Avdija is averaging 25.5 per game with 7.2 rebounds and 6.3 assists while shooting 47% from the floor and 37% from the arc. He’s the captain, the stalwart, and the star.
It’s good to see Deni confirm that he can hit such heights and carry a team. The only caveat is that Portland’s play style is set up for Avdija to succeed. The lack of consistent contributors around him has allowed him carte blanche, especially on offense. It’ll be interesting to see if he can maintain this level of production on a more structured, populated team.
For now, that doesn’t exist. Having full-power Deni is a lot better than having no Deni at all. The Blazers got a real one.
Jerami Grant
The resurrection of Jerami Grant is another positive story from the early season. The veteran forward had a terrible, no-good season last year, shooting 37% from the field and playing only 47 games. This year he’s already appeared in 23 and his percentage has rebounded to 44%, plus nearly 40% from the three-point arc. Grant came off the bench early in the season and was phenomenal. With the team’s injuries, he’s been starting. He’s been good there as well.
Jrue Holiday
17 points and 8 assists aren’t enough to encompass the contributions of newcomer Jrue Holiday. He almost singlehandedly stabilizes Portland’s halfcourt offense. He’s also a good middle-of-floor defender, something the Blazers don’t always have on the perimeter. His veteran savvy is like mortar, gluing together the various bricks of Portland’s otherwise-shaky roster. Holiday’s issue has been attendance. He’s missed 14 of 26 games and is currently out (along with seemingly half of the rest of the NBA) with a calf injury.
Pace and Possessions
The Blazers currently rank third in the NBA in Pace, third in Offensive Rebounding Percentage, and ninth in total possessions generated. They’re also third in the league in field goal attempts, fourth in three-point attempts.
All this is intrinsic to their style of play. They want to push tempo, score easy, and throw multiple shot attempts at opponents, closing the talent and skill gap with superior foes by generating more opportunities.
For the most part, they’ve succeeded. Portland’s games are usually close. They’ve notched some wonderful wins. The Denver Nuggets, Oklahoma City Thunder, and Cleveland Cavaliers have all fallen to Portland’s attack. They’ve dueled to a two-possession-or-less final score with the Minnesota Timberwolves, Orlando Magic, and Detroit Pistons besides. Big comebacks featuring big flurries are a Portland hallmark. They’ve become one of the teams that doesn’t look intimidating on paper, but is a handful to play once the ball goes up. That’s courtesy of their commitment to incessant, quick offense.
Donovan Clingan
Speaking of rebounding, Donovan Clingan is averaging a league-leading 4.5 offensive boards, part of 10.2 overall, in just 25 minutes per game. Those numbers are astounding. 1.5 blocks per game isn’t bad either, given that amount of playing time.
Development Stalled
If this was supposed to be a breakout year for Portland’s younger players–especially wings–they didn’t get the memo. Granted, Shaedon Sharpe is scoring a career-high 22 points per game, but he’s shooting 30.6% from the arc and his contributions are inconsistent. Toumani Camara has stumbled on offense, shooting just 41.5% from the floor and 33.7% from the arc. Kris Murray and Rayan Rupert can’t hit a shot to save their lives. Scoot Henderson hasn’t played at all due to injury. Yang Hansen isn’t ready to fill a spot in the rotation yet. Blake Wesley looked promising, at least as far as speed, but succumbed to injury after only six appearances. Caleb Love hails straight from the Island of Misfit Toys: an inveterate shooter who can’t shoot.
Forward Sidy Cissoko might be the only unproven Blazers player to outplay preseason expectations, and half of that is because he didn’t have any. For a young team, the Blazers evoke more head scratches than promise.
Coaching and Coordination
In the dating world, it’s become pretty well known that you want to watch out for two kinds of guys. Self-proclaimed “Nice Guys” top the list. “Nice” isn’t supposed to be a noun, an identity unto itself. It’s an adjective modifying other actions, a way of doing important or integral things. Without those actual things, “nice” doesn’t mean much. And the second red flag is like the first: a fancy car isn’t a personality.
Similarly, “fast” isn’t really an adequate marker for a team’s philosophy, at least not unto itself. What, exactly, are you doing quickly? That matters too. Being bad quicker doesn’t really achieve anything.
The Blazers don’t have a really good answer to that, “What are you doing?” question. Their offense is often one cut and a pass. Their defense is one stab and then pray that the opponent misses. Coordination, complexity, and consistency are largely absent.
Injuries provide a huge asterisk here. It’s hard to be organized when you’re not sure who’s playing night to night. The well-publicized, and unexpected, coaching change at the top of the year provides another.
Even so, you can’t predict much about the 2025-26 Blazers other than they’re going to run a lot and probably not give up. 26 games in, they’re not much better (at that or anything) than they were in Game 1. They may be worse. They’re existing more than evolving much as a team. If there’s firm direction above the player level, it’s not showing yet.
Transition Ball
For a team that wants to play fast and score easy, the Blazers produce a tepid 14.8 fastbreak points per game. That’s 17th in the NBA. Worse, they give up 16.6–24th in the league–for an aggregate deficit of -1.8 points per game. That’s a battle Portland can’t afford to lose, but they are.
Defense is one of the strong pegs upon which this roster has been built. They favor rangy, interchangeable wings, physical point-of-attack defenders, all backed up by defensively-apt centers. It seems like a solid plan.
Except as of today, the Blazers are giving up 121.9 points per game on average, the sixth-worst mark in the NBA. They’re mediocre to bad in percentage defense, 24th in True Shooting Percentage allowed, and 20th in Defensive Efficiency. Whatever strides the Blazers may have made on offense–exceeding expectations, even–they’re still giving it back and more on the other end.
Regarding offense…Portland is 29th in field goal percentage and 29th in three-point percentage. The only part of their shooting game that isn’t hound-dog-ugly is free-throw percentage. They’re fourth in the league at generating foul shots and they shoot 80% from the line. Other than that, covering your eyes when the Blazers attempt a shot is an act of self-preservation.
Assist-to-Turnover Ratio
The Blazers are dead last in the NBA in assist-to-turnover ratio. The assist part is bad; they’re 26th in the league, averaging about 25 assists per game. The turnover story? It’s god-awful. Portland gives up 17 per game, worst in the league. That leaves them around a 1.5 assist-to-turnover rate.
Opponents get almost 11 steals per game against the Blazers, also the worst mark in the NBA. Live-ball turnovers are supposed to be a strong point for Portland, generating much-needed points. Instead they’re sending them the other way.
We’ve mentioned them six times already, but it’s worth noting this. If you count Scoot Henderson (but not Damian Lillard), the Blazers have lost 81 games to injury among players who would have been considered in their Top 9 rotation going into the season. They’ve only played 26 games as a team total. That means, on average, 3 of 9 regular rotation players would be missing for the Blazers on any given night. That’s a little bit like running with your sneakers tied. It’s not an excuse for any of the “bad and ugly” things above, but it does help put them in perspective.
What did we miss? Share your good, bad, and ugly things about the season so far below!