Three Things NBA Preview: Portland Trail Blazers
Last Night, In Basketball is an independent publication that provides in-depth analysis of what actually happens on the court — covering all 30 teams, throughout the entire season and offseason.
The website and newsletter also depend on reader support.
Purchasing a paid subscription gets you access to features like Three Things I Noticed on League Pass, weekly deep dives into topics of interest, databases for several in-house statistics, and more, while also helping cover costs for things like travel and event coverage, as well as software that provides support for Film Findings videos.
As I detailed a few weeks ago, I’m once again re-appropriating the Three Things I Noticed on League Pass format to preview the upcoming season. Instead of three things I noticed, it’ll be something more along the lines of three things I’m looking forward to, interested in, or want to see. Some of them might be narrative-based, some might be stats, and some might include video. But they'll all be focused on the 2025-26 campaign.
The schedule for those posts will be as follows (podcasts previewing each division with Mo Dakhil are in parentheses):
- Atlantic Division (BOS, BKN, NYK, PHI, TOR) (Podcast)
- Central Division (CHI, CLE, DET, IND, MIL)
- Southeast Division (ATL, CHA, MIA, ORL, WAS) (Podcast)
- Pacific Division (GSW, LAC, LAL, PHX, SAC) (Podcast)
- Northwest Division (DEN, MIN, OKC, POR, UTA)
- Oct. 6-10: Southwest Division (DAL, HOU, MEM, NOP, SAS) (Podcast)
So without further ado, let's get to the Portland Trail Blazers, who had a strong (relatively) second half of the season and then made some interesting and aggressive moves this summer.
The defense, legit?
After starting the season 23-32 with the NBA's 24th-ranked defense through the All-Star Game, the Blazers came back from the break and went 13-14 on the strength of the league's fourth-best defense the rest of the way. They then doubled down on defense this offseason by trading Anfernee Simons and a couple second-round picks to Boston for Jrue Holiday.
The defense during that second half was mostly about shot-making and turnovers They finished sixth in opponent's effective field-goal percentage, via NBA Advanced Stats, and second in opponent's turnover rate. This after checking in 22nd and eighth in those stats during the pre-break portion of the season.
On the shotmaking end of things, I perhaps somewhat surprisingly kind of buy it. The Blazers were 11th in opponents' expected effective field goal percentage prior to the break, per GeniusIQ tracking, but opponents out-performed that conversion rate by the third-largest margin (2.51 percentage points) in the league. After the break, the Blazers were 10th in expected effective field goal percentage and opponents only out-performed expectation by 0.62 percentage points.
So the second half, in theory, was more representative of their actual shot defense than was the first half. Bringing in Holiday in place of Simons and giving more minutes to guys like Donovan Clingan (as opposed to Deandre Ayton) should only help on that front, you'd think.
I am, though, skeptical that a team can keep forcing turnovers at a Thunder-esque rate without the Thunder's stable of demons. That's likely to drop off year over year. The question then become whether the Blazers can make up for it with even better shot defense, cutting down on fouls, and especially better defensive rebounding, where they were pretty bad last year (28th in the NBA). Clingan should help on the glass but they're probably playing poor positional rebounders at two or three other spots, so it's going to be a challenge to alleviate that issue.
Still, the personnel here is better than people think and I feel comfortable betting that they can be something like the 10-12th best defense in the league over the course of the season, which would be a really nice foundation upon which to build.
