Portland Trail Blazers: Predicting the starting five, and rotation for 2021

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The Portland Trail Blazers have now locked in their roster for the 2021 season. Who will be in the starting five, and who will make the rotation?

The Portland Trail Blazers have locked in their roster at 14 players for the 2021 season, and with training camp just around the corner, it’s time to break down this 14-man squad.

It’s been a short off-season after the finals finished in the NBA Bubble, but this means fans didn’t have to wait long for player movement and signings. In just a month, we will have had the NBA Draft, Free Agency, and the trade window opening, and soon training camp and an NBA pre-season.

How will the starting five and rotation look come the first game of the regular season?

Guards

Damian Lillard, Portland Trail Blazers (Getty Images) (Photo by Abbie Parr/Getty Images) /

The starting guards are probably the easiest positions to pick as far as the starting five goes.

Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum are the first two names on the team sheet every night. Though I don’t expect these two Blazer veterans to lead the league in minutes again, they will still be one and two in minutes played on this team.

The biggest difference will be now that neither of them will have to play the three, while they will also having proper shooting guard backups.

Those backups will be Anfernee Simons, Gary Trent Jr., and Rodney Hood.

Simons has a lot to prove in his third NBA season, but Neil Olshey has made it clear that he is the backup point guard. Though McCollum will run the second unit when Lillard is off the floor, Simons is the backup in the case of injury, and he will be in the bench rotation.

Trent Jr. is the back up two, and it will be interesting to see if he continues the excellent form that we saw at the end of last season. In the Bubble seeding games, he averaged 17 points a game on 50 percent from three. Though he won’t play as many minutes at three this season, he can establish himself as a key member of the team this season as the main shooting guard backup.

Rodney Hood will spend some time as a shooting guard but will mainly be a three this season.