If you were asked a year ago what the Portland Trail Blazers had to be excited about in the post-Damian Lillard era, you might not have been able to come up with much.
The first year of their rebuild in 2023-24 was beset by injuries and a lack of development for their most important lottery picks, Shaedon Sharpe and Scoot Henderson. They won 21 games, got blown out by 60 points twice in the same season and for all that losing, fell back three spots in last year's draft lottery, from the fourth-worst record to the seventh overall pick.
Things are different now.
With less than a month left in the 2024-25 season, the Blazers are closer to the play-in than they are to the best odds at landing Cooper Flagg in the draft lottery. And they're there in large part because of the play of the very same young players that appeared to be plateauing last season, as well as a couple of smart, under-the-radar trade acquisitions over the past two summers by general manager Joe Cronin.
The Trail Blazers have built a talented young core
Henderson, after a rough rookie season and shaky start to his second year, has turned a corner in the second half of this season. He's cut down on his turnovers and seen his scoring efficiency tick up. Before the 2023 draft, he was seen as a generational point guard prospect, the clear No. 1 pick in most drafts that didn't include Victor Wembanyama, and the Blazers taking him third overall contributed at least in part to Lillard asking to be traded. Henderson may never live up to that hype—he has a long way to go before even being an All-Star is realistic—but the "bust" talk that hounded him early in his career has largely dissipated.
Sharpe is still a bit of a mystery — he missed most of last season after undergoing a core muscle surgery and his role has shifted throughout this season — but he still has the most pure star upside of anyone on the current Blazers roster. He's regressed as a shooter, and his inconsistent defense led head coach Chauncey Billups to bench him at the start of the team's second-half turnaround. But the highs are high.
This year's No. 7 overall pick, Donovan Clingan, has seen his minutes fluctuate as he navigates the foul trouble and conditioning issues that plague most rookie big men. His offensive skillset is still very rudimentary. But the dominant rim protector that led UConn to two consecutive NCAA championships has had a similar defensive impact thus far in the NBA. He's leading the NBA in blocks per 36 minutes with 3.2. He needs to get better as a scorer to be a high-level starter long-term, but even in just 18.2 minutes per game, his defensive prowess is evident in his rookie season.
But the real revelations this season have been two players Cronin acquired in little-heralded trades, who are truly defining the defense-first ethos the organization is currently pushing. Toumani Camara, a 2023 second-round pick of the Phoenix Suns, was seen by many as an afterthought when he was included in the Lillard trade; in his second season, he's been arguably Portland's best player. He may not make one of the All-Defensive teams this year, but he'll get some votes, and his offense (10.8 points per game on good efficiency) has improved dramatically from his rookie season.
Deni Avdija, meanwhile, the Blazers felt so strongly about acquiring that they gave up two first-round picks to Washington in June, something rebuilding teams don't often do. Avdija has been everything they hoped he'd be, a two-way engine and big playmaking wing. He's one of Portland's toughest defenders and the shooting improvement he showed in his fourth season with the Wizards has carried over.
What was once a rudderless and directionless rebuild has suddenly become quite promising with Avdija, Camara, Sharpe, Simons and Clingan leading the way.
Despite their unexpected success this season, the Blazers are far from a finished product and still have some real questions to answer this summer about the future of their roster and coaching staff.
On the coaching front: Billups deserves a lot of credit for the turnaround. His handling of Henderson and Sharpe, taking both out of the starting lineup at times when they were struggling as a way of demonstrating accountability, has contributed directly to their growth in the second half of the season. The team has stayed bought-in to what Billups is preaching despite it being well-known that the coach is in the final guaranteed year of his contract, with the Blazers holding a team option for next season.
The question of whether they will exercise that option, or mutually part ways at the end of the season, will be one of the most fascinating subplots of the Blazers' offseason. Until the middle of January, it was widely assumed that Billups was on the way out and they were simply running out the clock until his contract was up. And they may still ultimately decide to move on in April. But Billups has made it so they'll have a real decision to make.
They'll also have to make decisions about the futures of a few of their highest-paid veterans, who play the same positions as some of their future building blocks. Anfernee Simons will command a starting spot as long as he's in Portland, ahead of either Henderson or Sharpe (he's currently starting alongside Sharpe). Jerami Grant makes it difficult to start Avdija and Camara together on the wing. The arrival of Clingan was a sign that Deandre Ayton may not be in the long-term plans. Simons ($27.6 million) and Ayton ($35.5 million) are going into the final years of their deals, while Grant has three years remaining on the five-year, $160 million contract he signed in the summer of 2023 before Lillard requested a trade. Moving them could be challenging but likely necessary as the Blazers' youth movement comes into its own.
They're not all the way there yet, but the Trail Blazers are in a much better place in 2025 than they have been over the last two years.