NBA Halloween: Playing trick-or-treat with each team’s early season trend

Portland Trail Blazers

The Blazers’ early-season schedule will be a challenge: Trick

Another year, same old Portland Trail Blazers. The San Antonio Spurs are notorious for racking up regular season wins no matter what, and for good reason, but Terry Stotts’ squad is building that same kind of reputation despite an annual tradition of questioning how far that Damian Lillard–CJ McCollum tandem can really take them.

In the playoffs, those doubts almost always come to light eventually, but everyone should just accept Rip City rips off wins during this 82-game grind. They’re only 3-2 to start the new campaign, but they face a gauntlet in the opening months of the season, with 13 of their first 18 games coming on the road. In their first five games, they’ve already traded blow with Denver, Sacramento, Dallas, San Antonio and OKC.

Despite all this, their two losses came against the two best teams of that group by a combined 11 points. They went 3-1 on their four-game road trip, they’re good for a January and February surge pretty much every year, and they’re doing all this while Stotts is trying to implement new faces like Hassan Whiteside, Kent Bazemore and even youngster Anfernee Simons, who didn’t get much run last year. Portland has a tough opening schedule. Just don’t make the mistake of thinking it will hold this team back from another playoff berth in the West.