Season finish: 41-41

Season highlight: The Blazers got great contributions from numerous youngsters last season, more than their ratings would indicate; Nic Claxton, Moses Brown, RJ Barrett, and perhaps most importantly Coby White all logged a PER season near or above 20, and the Blazers rode those players to get that last playoff spot. With the now 2nd youngest roster in the league, that’s heckin impressive.

Season lowlight: Did the Blazers give up too much for that 8th seed? Obviously the jury is still out on so many of these players, but the Blazers did give up a top 10 pick, a couple of young emerging players, and another 1st to fortify that run. Regardless of what the future holds, their gamble’s immediate consequence last season was rewarded with a 1st rd exit to the conference leading Thunder.

Best Trade: The Trail Blazers send Brook Lopez, Furkan Korkmaz, and Melvin Frazier to Utah for Cameron Johnson, Andre Roberson, Nic Claxton, and an early 2nd.
All of the trades Portland pulled really deserve a TBD because there are so many young guys involved, but I’m going for this one A) because Cam Johnson helped bring in Monte Morris this offseason, and B) Nic Claxton was great for them in the NLL despite probably overperforming his rating. Korkmaz was a solid young piece and Brook Lopez is a solid center, but he’s getting older, so overall I feel like the Blazers got younger while not losing much talent overall.

Worst Trade: The Trail Blazers send Caris Levert and a 22 2nd to Brooklyn for Jordan Poole, the ORL 1st, and a 22 OKC 1st.
This all comes down to how you view 2 key things. One is how you feel about Levert. His NBA self has gotten better each season, but comes with some reasonable injury concerns, having missed substantial time each of the past 2 seasons. There’s also question about his future in NBA BKN, with how much run he’ll get next to the two superstars, or if he gets traded and where that would be, but there’s no doubt that when he’s healthy, he looks really good and has been getting better. The other key thing is how you feel about the ORL pick. ORL I have to assume was in the running for the top of the lottery at the time, so it’s a reasonable risk to take, but in a draft where not even the #1 is a sure thing, I kinda view it as maybe the wrong time to take that gamble, which is why I view it as the worst of the moves even if it’s not “bad” per se. Especially when that ORL pick ended up being used in another future-oriented move, which was…

Other trades: The Trail Blazers send Kelly Oubre Jr, Malik Beasley, the ORL 1st, a POR 21 1st to Miami for RJ Barrett and Tristan Thompson
The Blazers had one other minor trade but this was the other big trade, arguably the biggest of them all last season that POR did. This is a franchise-altering deal, albeit one that we won’t know the trajectory of for at least a couple of years. Kelly Oubre was injured at the time of the trade, but has landed in NBA GS in a great situation, while Malik Beasley was on fire for NBA MIN before the stoppage, and although he was given a new contract this season he finds himself potentially crunched for playing time behind Anthony Edwards, as well as newfound off-court issues. Meanwhile RJ has not been particularly impressive in his rookie year and spent some of it injured, so this year may shed some more light on him (although his NLL self netted more than 28 PPG.) It’s clear that Titles has bet on himself with this deal, especially with the POR 1st next year being part of the deal. Time will tell whether he landed a steal in RJ, or if Oubre and Beasley both continue their hot runs, or maybe even both! That’s the best kind of deal imo, one where both teams win, but we’ll see if it actually shakes out that way. The other deal was a minor 2nd rd pick sell for 15 GM points, standard market value there.

Star: Coby White - G

I’m gonna throw Titles a bone here and say White was the most impressive last season, due to a combination of production and having played all 82 games. 46% from the field and 38% from 3, 16.5 PPG and 6.6 APG had a big impact on his playoff chances. He did it with volume too, with over 1100 attempts. Truly impressive from the now-sophomore.

Goat: Malik Beasley- G
Obviously Beasley is no longer there, but in his time with Portland he posted a sub-15 PER, and in nearly 25 MPG he posted less than double digit PPG without contributing much else across the board. He was good efficiency wise but he just did not have a tremendous impact whenever he was on the floor. Not hard to see why Portland wanted to cut bait.

Free Agents: C Tristan Thompson, G Andre Roberson, G Deanthony Melton, SF Jaylen Hoard
Let’s start small and work our way up. Hoard is a small fry who currently doesn’t have a contract, but it’s inconsequential if he leaves. Roberson is a solid bench guy who’s on the right side of 30, but unfortunately he also does not currently have a contract so it’s questionable if he will be able to be kept. Melton is an interesting case, he’s rated as a middle of the bench guy (75 currently) but signed a 4 year deal with the NBA Grizz this offseason as an RFA so it’s clear he has a role. It is 8M+ per year, but the blazers are so young (read: cheap) that the only guy they have making double digit Ms is Andrew Wiggins. So they can probably afford it. The biggest question’s gonna be TT. He came over in the Barrett deal as an extra piece, but Portland will have to spend a bit in GM points to keep him, and he doesn’t really bring much else to the table besides cleaning the glass. He will be a good deal cheaper the next 2 years, earning just shy of 10 mil, but will it be too much? They do have Thomas Bryant under contract for less than that and he’s younger as well. But will Titles cut bait on a pretty decent acquisition so soon? I think this is pretty up in the air, especially with the super FA coming next season, I could see Titles just saving his points and cap space for more meaningful signings.

Draft: Aleksej Pokusevski
Pronounced “Alexei Pokushevski” I believe, this guy is perhaps the biggest wildcard of the entire draft. He’s tall, he’s lanky, and he moves like a guard with a center’s height with and without the ball. But there’s a couple questions about him: 1) Is he TOO lanky? There’s real concern about him getting bullied around at the next level. And 2) Was his competition too soft? There’s also concern that he couldn’t put up better numbers against teams in the Greek B League. But with his skillset, if he’s able to fill out that frame with a good conditioning program, the tools are there for him to be one of the most complete players in the league, a true swiss-army-knife type of player. I don’t think Portland necessarily wanted him as they initially tried to select someone that was off the board, but for a team already brimming with as of yet undetermined talent, Aleksej is the biggest of them all. Portland swung for the fences with this pick, so we’ll see if they end up glad they got him or if they wished they’d moved from this spot.

Future: Man, Portland might be one of the biggest mysteries going into next season. On one hand, they have some legitimately exciting prospects that could end up franchise cornerstones (RJ and Coby especially). On the other hand, some other of those prospects haven’t really given you anything to write home about in the NBA and way overperformed in the NLL (Nic Claxton, Moses Brown.) For next year specifically, I think there should be some concern over whether Portland can replicate last season given their roster right now, which feels a couple of years away. However, if their key sophs can have a better 2nd season than 1st, we could actually see a BETTER finish this year than last. Will that be enough to carry them past the 8th seed at this point? Probably not, and even 8 should be in question. The teams ahead of them mostly stayed the same or got better, conference rival Memphis vastly improved this offseason even before finding out if they retain Gallinari, and I think somewhat of a reversion to the ratings is in order. But what’s important is growth; if it trends in the right direction, Portland could be a steady riser over the next few years. If it does not, however, they are lacking a pick this year in possibly the worst draft to lack one in, so they could be instead set back several seasons. Their draft choice might epitomize their team as a whole more than any team’s draft this year: They are a true wild card, and it’ll be interesting to see which way the Blazers trend going forward.