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For the first time in five years, the Trail Blazers have qualified for the playoffs.
It’s been a winding road from their opening night loss on October 22—head coach Chauncey Billups was arrested by federal agents a few hours after the final buzzer sounded, and indicted as part of a gambling conspiracy—to this past Tuesday, when the team defeated the Phoenix Suns on the road in the Play-In Tournament to secure the Western Conference’s #7 seed.
Such a scenario would have seemed remote as recently as March 15, when the Blazers lost to a shorthanded 76ers team in Philadelphia to drop to 32-36, dropping to 10th in the West. A few weeks prior, Portland’s second-leading scorer, Shaedon Sharpe, had been diagnosed with a stress reaction in his left fibula and was widely assumed to miss the rest of the season.
All-Star forward Deni Avdija had missed several games earlier in March with a lower back injury which had plagued him throughout the season, and most members of the rotation had been on the shelf at some point throughout the season. As such, it seemed likely that the team would shut it down and play for next season, as they had done for the previous four, and await the return of Damian Lillard, who spent the year selling Toyotas as he recovered from a torn Achilles.
Instead, the team rallied behind interim coach Tiago Splitter and has now gone 11-4 since the loss to Philadelphia, with Avdija regaining his form and Sharpe unexpectedly returning to the lineup with two games left in the regular season.
Everything culminated with their win Tuesday night in Phoenix, which saw the Blazers erase an 11-point fourth quarter deficit behind the dominant play of Avdija, who finished with 41 points, 12 assists, and 7 rebounds.
Jerami Grant, the team’s resident constant-fan-bickering-over-his-contract figurehead, returned from a calf injury to hit two huge threes down the stretch and punctuated the win with a breakaway dunk after Suns guard Jalen Green missed a potential game-winning three pointer with 9 seconds left. Sharpe scored 12 points on 4/7 shooting in limited minutes and posted a team-high +19 plus/minus.
Embattled third-year guard Scoot Henderson, who endured a rocky stretch after missing the season’s first 51 games with a hamstring injury, continued his redemption tour, making winning plays and playing the kind of defense his elite physical tools have suggested that he one day could.
Overall, the team has finally started to look like what was promised by GM Joe Cronin ahead of the season, when he doubled down on veteran leadership and declared it to be “winning time” following a multi-year rebuild which saw the team lose lots of games on purpose so that it could move up in the draft to select players like Henderson, Sharpe, and center Donovan Clingan.
Tuesday night in Phoenix was vindication for Cronin after years of fan and media speculation over the direction he had taken the team while under the protection of the late-stage Allen family ownership group.
It also capped a year-long stretch that has felt like a fever dream wherein the team: surged in value following the out-of-nowhere drafting of the only Chinese-born player in the NBA; celebrated the return of prodigal son Damian Lillard; sold to a subprime auto loan magnate who may or may not be able to afford the basic expenses of running a professional basketball franchise; saw the owners of Panda Express enter the ownership group and then immediately get sued by the owners of the city’s new WNBA franchise; watch as its suddenly competent head coach was indicted; and lobby for and ultimately ensure passage of a widely unpopular $365 million public subsidy to renovate the Moda Center. They also won a big game against the Clippers.
The team now faces the heavily favored San Antonio Spurs and their 22-year-old 7’4” French superstar, Victor Wembanyama, who may already be the best player in the world. (The Spurs won 20 more games than the Blazers this year and beat them in two of their three matchups.)
However, the Blazers are a better team than their record would suggest. They have young, high-upside talent just starting to hit its stride plus a core of battle-tested veterans, most of whom are plus defenders. They’re also playing with nothing to lose, and will have at least two home games in front of a rabid home crowd that hasn’t seen true, full-capacity playoff basketball since 2019.
Betting against them may be ill-advised.
