Portland Trail Blazers: ESPN model projects ninth-place finish in West for Blazers in 2020-21

With the season almost underway, experts are now making predictions for the Portland Trail Blazers. ESPN’s most recent RPM projections have them just outside the Playoffs.

After an offseason of retooling and adding reinforcements across the depth chart, many among the NBA world — including the Portland Trail Blazers themselves — are convinced that there’s something special in the air for this 2020-21 season. Player-for-player, Portland appears to have both the talent and mental gumption needed to command respect from all across the league.

All except for … ESPN’s most recent projection models.

ESPN’s NBA Insider Kevin Pelton introduced this season’s model (subscription required) this morning, which projected not only a Blazers’ win total, but their odds of making the postseason.

In a loaded Western Conference, the projection sees the Blazers finishing with a winning record over the 72-game season, but, it has them being leapfrogged by a few Western Conference up-and-comers, and on the outside looking in, perhaps vying again for a spot in the Play-In Tournament.

This isn’t anything to get overly concerned with. In fact, in a way, this is one surefire way to know that basketball is closely on the horizon. Each and every year, there’s some reputable outlet that projects the Blazers to be postseason outsiders.

Just last season, FiveThirtyEight gave Portland a 10 percent chance of finding a way to lasso the Memphis Grizzlies and snag the No. 8 seed.

The moral of the story? What are odds and projections to a Damian Lillard-led team? Historically, it’s been wood to the fire, and motivation towards clinching seven consecutive Playoff berths.

But, it does provide a secondary side of the story that shows that everyone has Portland poised to be a championship contender.

If nothing else, it underscores how much of an emphasis it will be for Portland to excel at two things: keeping a leg up in Western Conference games and tiebreakers, and getting out to a hot start to begin the season. In a mere ten days, we’ll see how much thought the Blazers have put into this mindset.