Plenty has changed for the Portland Trail Blazers over the course of the last year. One of the most obvious and significant developments of this current season has been the continued breakout of Deni Avdija, who's looking like an All-Star in his sixth NBA season. But along with this, the question that's looming larger and larger lately is: what's the future look like for Scoot Henderson?
After an offseason hamstring tear, Henderson is yet to play this season. He's supposed to be re-evaluated sometime during the middle of January, but who knows how accurate that will end up being. As he continues to miss more time, the certainty about his future with the Blazers only grows more murky.
Scoot was supposed to be a franchise player when he was selected third overall in the 2023 NBA Draft. That clearly hasn't materialized, and it's safe to say we'd all be surprised if it did at this point.
But there's still a world in which he can remain a mainstay with this team, as well as an impactful player that leads to wins. Will that happen? Will Avdija's breakout have any bearing on how this front office sees Henderson? Only time will tell.
What will Scoot Henderson's future in Portland be?
What makes this trickier is how different this team looks compared to the version Scoot was drafted into. Portland has a lot of what they do flowing through through Avdija right now. The Blazers are starting to understand who their core pieces might be in their next contending era, and that inevitably shifts how everyone else gets evaluated.
That doesn’t mean Scoot’s suddenly disposable. He’s still only 21, and the physical tools that made him such a high pick are still there. Speed and rim pressure don’t just stop mattering overnight. The problem is that availability matters too, and so does fit. When you miss this much time, your team doesn't have any choice but to adapt without you. That goes for Henderson as much as it does LeBron James or anyone else.
And this is where the tension starts to show. This season has quietly become less about pure development and more about building habits that lead to wins. Avdija is clearly going to continue to command touches and responsibility as long as he keeps this level of play up, and those things aren’t easily reshuffled without consequences.
This doesn’t have to end in a Scoot breakup to feel uncomfortable. Sometimes the question isn’t whether a player can be good, but whether the timeline still lines up. Right now, Portland doesn’t have an answer, and that's the truth of this all. Ideally, Henderson will return and prove he can fit into the Blazers' evolving vision. But it's fair to say it's looking more uncertain than ever.