Record predictions for every NBA team

Portland Trailblazers (Projected Record: 41-41)

Portland has entered the year with high hopes following a closing run to last year that saw them scorched the league offensively in the aftermath of their acquisition of bruising big man Jusuf Nurkic.

Nurkic projects as a pretty average player in my system, because his performance while in Denver was much worse than what we saw from him in Portland last year, and as a result of using multiple years of data, Nurkic’s performance with the Blazers is expected to regress to the mean. CJ. McCollum and Damian Lillard both project as high-impact players, both in the top 50 of projected plus-minus impact. The rest of the Blazers’ starting lineup is solid, but their bench rotation figures to be relatively poor.

In addition, the fact that Portland can be expected to give significant minutes to Evan Turner acts as a significant drag on their projected performance. Turner can be expected to provide replacement level production, while being paid much more like a low-end starter and likely playing over 2000 minutes this year. Turner has never been viewed favorably by plus-minus stats, as his inability to provide much off the ball, while being just okay with the ball in his hands tends to hurt the teams while he’s on the floor.

It should be noted that despite their .500 projected record, the Blazers actually figure to be an above average team, they just suffer from playing 52 games in the Western Conference.