Considering the circumstances, the Portland Trail Blazers aren't playing bad basketball with less a month to go in the 2023-24 regular season. The team is 4-6 in its last 10 games despite missing Jerami Grant for six of those and Deandre Ayton, Scoot Henderson and Jabari Walker for half. That's not even counting the continued abscences of Malcolm Brogdon and Shaedon Sharpe.
The Blazers have gotten some incredible individual performances to keep them afloat while head coach Chauncey Billups deals with a depleted roster (although he should be used to that by now). On the flip side, the team is getting little to no production from certain players who need to be producing as the season comes to a close.
Trail Blazers player stock watch: 2 huge risers, 2 unlucky fallers
Some of Portland's most reliable players have been steady since the all-star break. Anfernee Simons has only missed one game and is averaging more than 23 points and 6 assists, for example. Others, like Kris Murray, are just starting to get regular run and have been "meh" at best.
Here are four Blazers that fall on the two extreme ends of the spectrum.
Stock up: Deandre Ayton
Deandre Ayton's remarkable post-all-star-break run has been a massive but welcome surprise for Portland. The big man, who was acquired as part of the Damian Lillard trade, was putting up the worst numbers of his career through the first four months. To make matters worse, he missed 17 of a possible 54 games due to injury.
Then, for reasons unknown, the 25-year-old became one of the best centers in the NBA.
In the eight games he's played since all-star weekend, Ayton is averaging 24.5 points, 14.3 rebounds and 1.7 stocks (steals plus blocks) while shooting 64 percent from the field and 88 percent from the free-throw line.
He missed another handful of games during that stretch, but he's played in Portland's last five contests with averages of 27.2 points and 15.0 rebounds. That includes a 30-point, 19-rebound performance against the Toronto Raptors; a 33-point, 19-rebound game against the Atlanta Hawks; and a 31-point, 14-rebound night against the New York Knicks.
Ayton's stock is surging and his confidence is flying along with it. If the Blazers can unlock the potential he never lived up to in Phoenix, the center position is set through at least 2025-26.
Stock down: Jerami Grant
Jerami Grant is nursing a hamstring injury that's kept him out of four straight games and seven of Portland's last nine. Would that same issue cause him to miss this much time if the team were pushing for a postseason spot? Maybe, maybe not. The true extent of these types of muscle injuries are hard to decipher for tanking teams like the Blazers.
Regardless, it would be nice to have the 29-year-old available.
The simplest reason is that Grant has been one of the Trail Blazers' best players this year. He's the only regular Portland starter to have crossed the 50-games-played threshold, is one of only two Blazers to score more than 20 ppg and has proven his uptick in 3-point shooting last season wasn't a fluke as he's shooting a career-high 40.2 percent from deep.
With Simons, Ayton and Scoot finally all healthy, it would be intriguing (and important) to see what 4/5 of a starting Portland lineup would look like.
Trail Blazers General Manager Joe Cronin has said on multiple occasions that Grant is in Portland to stay. But the five-year, $160 million deal he signed last offseason is still albatross-like, especially for a franchise that is in rebuild mode but somehow also perilously close to paying the luxury tax.
Letting Grant put up some big numbers at the end of the year would at worst keep his trade value steady. Having him glued to the bench is letting what value he had dip further.
Stock up: Dalano Banton
Hot take: Joe Cronin made the best move of the 2024 trade deadline. If not, he legitimately made a good one acquiring Dalano Banton from the Boston Celtics essentially for free.
Banton has always been an intriguing young player as a 6-foot-9 point guard. He's flashed the physical traits that made him 46th pick in the 2021 draft, but he's never put together any consistent stretches his first few seasons in the league.
Perhaps that's because he never got the chance.
In 16 games with the Trail Blazers (seven starts) Banton is averaging 14.4 points, 4.3 rebounds and 2.8 assists and is shooting almost 39 percent from three on more than four attempts per game in 25 minutes. His 40 games with the Raptors to start this season was the best stretch of his career to that point - he averaged 7.8 points and shot 34.1 percent from deep in 14.4 minutes a night.
Banton's versatility has also stood out, and with the injury situation, has been crucial since he arrived in Portland. He's started games at both backcourt spots and his size has allowed Billups to play him as essentially a small forward in three-guard lineups.
He's still only 24 years old and this extended run is helping Banton show what he can do at the NBA level when given a legitimate opportunity.
Stock down: Scoot Henderson
It was exceptionally bad timing for Scoot Henderson to get injured and miss eight straight games.
After an up-and-down start to his rookie season, Scoot's improvement forced Billups to hand him the starting point guard duties. Henderson went from averaging 10.8 points, 4.1 assists and 3.1 turnovers on 37/25/78 shooting splits before Christmas to 14.5 points, 5.2 assists and fewer than 3 giveaways a night with shooting splits of 38/35/84 after.
Scoot went 45-of-46 from the free-throw line over a 12-game stretch and shot 48 percent from deep on more than three attempts per game between Jan. 26 and Feb. 13, the day he was named the Blazers starter for the rest of the year.
Then he got hurt (aggravating an injury during the Rising Stars Tournament of all games), missed eight games and hasn't been the same since he returned. His scoring has dropped to 10.2 ppg and his 3-point shooting has fallen to 15.8 percent.
It was critical that Scoot end a rough rookie campaign on a high note. Instead, he got hurt and hasn't found the groove he discovered in early February. This "stock down" designation needs to quickly revert to "stock up" or there will be even more questions about Henderson's future going into 2024-25.