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Portland Trail Blazers
Win Total: 22.5 | Moore's Projection: 13.7
Bet/Lean/Pass: Under 22.5, 3 Units.
Handicap
The tankiest roster with the tankiest coach in the tankiest conference in a tanky division. Other than that, though…
The alarms are starting to ring about Scoot Henderson after another bad preseason. Lots of time in his career but it's clear that Henderson does not currently look like a player primed to break out and erase an injury laden and brutally inefficient season in his rookie campaign. If that's a miss at No.2, that's devastating for Portland.
Anfernee Simons is not a net positive impact guy for Portland. He can score, he's a good passer, he'll likely wind up contributing positively to a good team at some point in some role, maybe even a major one. But if he was going to raise the floor for this franchise we would have seen it by now.
Deandre Ayton is probably not as bad as he looks in Portland, because that's probably true for most of the roster. But also, again, he's not part of the solution.
Shaedon Sharpe might be a guy with just a little more seasoning.
Jerami Grant is good, which is why the Lakers are so hot to trot to nab him in a trade. Deni Avdija might not be the best player on the roster skill-wise but he's probably the best player in contributing to winning. There are some interesting players on the roster like Duop Reath and Toumani Camera who will likely be positive contributors at some point for some team.
Donovan Clingan loooks good and might pop, but he definitely does not project as a player to build the team around or a primary engine.
My point is that the roster isn't barren, it's probably better than the Nets'.
But there's no structure around which to build anything. It's just a collection of players running up and down and shooting.
Grant, Robert Williams, and potentially one of Simons or Sharpe could get moved before January.
The perception is that there's more talent on this team than some of the other tank squads, and I'm not sure I agree with that.
In the last three seasons under Chauncey Billups, the Blazers have finished 30.5 total wins lower than their win total across those seasons, including 6.5 lower than the win totals in the 20's the last two seasons. That's the biggest difference in expected wins vs. actual over the past three seasons. Billups is a Hall of Famer and a legendary point guard underrated by history. He's also maybe the greatest tank commander coach we've seen in the modern era.
The team needs a franchise star. This is a franchise-player draft. They're bad to begin with. It's gonna be a long year with wins in the teens.
Trends
Since 2011 not including the COVID-shortened 2020 season…
- Win totals less than 23 are 9-7 to the over.
- Teams with a win total of 25 or lower who were bottom-10 in both offense and defense last season are 10-7 to the over. Essentially, it's hard to bet that bad year over year.
How It Goes Over
The Blazers get off to a hot start behind schedule luck facing teams that are struggling to start the year, pull off some close games, and despite a late tank, still manage to slip to 24 or 25 wins.
How It Goes Under
The plan works to perfection and they land Cooper Flagg in next year's draft.
Sneaky Player I Like
Love Toumani Camera's game, but Duop Reath is sneaky good. Reath finished with 18-7 per 36 minutes on 46-36-74 splits, 55% eFG, with 2.1 stocks (steals plus blocks) per game. He's genuinely impactful and a team should look to pick him up.
Data courtesy ofNBA.com/stats, Basketball-Reference.com, DunksAndThrees.com, and PositiveResidual.com.
