The Portland Trail Blazers lead the league in turnovers per game. If you have watched this team at all this year, that doesn't come as a surprise. Not only do they turn the ball over more than anyone else in the league this year, they do it more than any team in the NBA in over a decade.
Any guesses on who the last team was to turn the ball over more than the 2025-26 Blazers? If you guessed The Process 76ers, I'm impressed. The 2014-15 76ers (who went 18-64 on purpose, by the way) turned the ball over 17.7 times, a mark the Blazers could actually still reach if their final two games are nightmarish.
To find the last NBA team that turned the ball over this much while going at least .500 takes you back even further. The 1999-2000 Orlando Magic finished exactly 41-41 and turned the ball over 17.6 times per game. In other words, no team has turned the ball over as much and won as many games as these Blazers do since Y2K.
Yay? This can be viewed in two ways. Either this roster is just going to turn the ball over at an absurd rate forever, or if this team adds a few more players who can protect the ball (Damian Lillard is a good start) they can at least not be historically bad holding onto the ball and that will open up more doors to success.
Blazers have been their own worst enemy all year long
We know this team struggles to shoot 3-pointers; that's frustrating, but I think most fans can at least live with it because the players on this team simply aren't good 3-point shooters. It's hard to blame a group of guys for not being productive in something they're not actually good at.
Turnovers are a different story, though; protecting the ball is something that teams can control, and I don't think it's dramatic to say the Blazers would have multiple more wins this season if they were an average team at protecting the ball.
While turnovers are often thought of as a coaching matter, the Blazers were woeful at protecting the ball last season too, when Chauncey Billups was still running the show. So maybe this group is just more prone to coughing up the ball than we'd like.
Playing multiple young, developing players major minutes will always come with some hiccups, turnovers included. But plenty of other teams are doing the same thing, and aren't setting 21st-century records for turnover futility. There are plenty of areas for improvement this offseason, and holding onto the dang ball has to be priority No. 1. Fans are running out of hair to pull out.