The Portland Trail Blazers are coming off an encouraging 36-46 season. They expect to build on that momentum in 2025-26, hoping to make the play-in despite being in a loaded Western Conference. However, they face a concerning low win projection of 33.5 games, suggesting that Portland's hot stretch to finish the season may have been a fluke and that they are due for regression to the mean.
Tim Legler and Adam Mares recently covered their over/under win total predictions for the Western Conference on the ALL NBA Podcast. Both wound up taking the over for the Blazers, but not by much, predicting them to win around 34-35 games.
Trail Blazers are caught between two timelines
On paper, the Blazers' roster is talented enough to exceed this win total if they really wanted to. And as of now, it sounds like they do, with general manager Joe Cronin saying that "it's winning time." That optimism sounds great in the summer, but unfortunately, the Blazers are in a stacked West that only continues to get better. Despite the win-now trade for Jrue Holiday, they're fighting an uphill battle even to make a play-in spot.
Dating back to the end of Damian Lillard's first stint in Portland, the Blazers have tended to "shut things down" towards the end of the season. Although they say they want to win, that could be at play in 2025-26 if/when they realize their goals are too ambitious. One particular position this could impact is the center spot.
"You look at the three centers: Donovan Clingan, Robert Williams, and Yang Hansen. All three of those guys can play. So that's another thing you have to balance out... How much do you go to development? How much do you experiment? I think this all comes down to how they start," Mares said.
Portland's obvious Robert Williams problem
However, Legler shot down the notion of a three-headed center monster in Portland based on one harsh reality: Robert Williams III can't stay healthy.
"The Robert Williams factor would be important, but you realize he's played 61 games in the last three years. Big guys that repeatedly have lower body injuries -- it just feels like it's tough to ever really find your footing and put together a sustained run of health. I don't know what kind of a factor he is, which means the other two big guys that are going to play are still very, very young players. That could hurt them."
To put it gently, Williams' two-year stretch in Portland has been underwhelming. He's totaled just 26 games, making Portland's initial Jrue Holiday trade with the Celtics look worse. More puzzling than that deal, however, is the fact that Williams remains on the roster. The Blazers value him too highly, given his injury history.
But with Deandre Ayton out of the picture and Williams' unreliability, perhaps this is all by design for Portland. They'll get a long look at their recent first-round selections, Clingan and Hansen, evaluating whether they can fit together, and if not, which one they should build around.