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Portland Trail Blazers: Predicting starting lineup and rotation for ’22 season

By Stevie Cozens

Damian Lillard, CJ McCollum, Portland Trail Blazers (Photo by Steph Chambers/Getty Images)
Damian Lillard, CJ McCollum, Portland Trail Blazers (Photo by Steph Chambers/Getty Images) /
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The Portland Trail Blazers have 12 players under contract as well as one two-way player and one second-round draft pick. Though they could still sign one more player with their taxpayer mid-level, the Blazers will likely go into the season with 13 players as they added Greg Brown of Texas to a second-round pick deal. With all the strong free agents signed, the Blazers core is basically set.

Keeping this in mind, let’s predict the starting lineup for the 2022 season.

Point guard – Damian Lillard

Backup point guard – CJ McCollum, Anfernee Simons

The easiest position and the first name on the team sheet every night is obviously Damian Lillard.

Hall-of-Famer, greatest ever Trail Blazer, one of the greatest shooters of all-time, Dame just continues to elevate his stock every year. This team is slightly different from last year’s team, but Dame will suit up for his 10th NBA season as one of the best players in the NBA, and a proven commodity to Blazers fans.

He has finished in the top eight in MVP voting the last four years, but if the Blazers record was better, he may have lifted an MVP trophy in one of their last two seasons.

Not only has Dame shot 40.1 percent and 39.1 percent from three the last two years, but he also led the NBA in threes made in the clutch last season, and was the most efficient performer in the clutch too. Dame’s regular-season performances have just got better and better the last few years, and he may be playing on the best offensive starting five he has ever had with the Blazers in his ten seasons with the team.

Dame rolls into the 2022 season as one of the top two point guards in the league.

In terms of the backups, CJ McCollum is likely used as the full-time backup, as he has been in previous years. This means that one of McCollum or Lillard will be on the floor at all times. This is ideally the best way to run the starters and bench units, especially when you consider McCollum’s great playmaking skills. In the event of foul trouble or injury, Anfernee Simons can step in as well.

Though one of McCollum or Lillard were on the floor at all times last year, sometimes Simons brought the ball up or operated as the point guard anyway. He has become more capable of this as his NBA career has gone on.