The Portland Trail Blazers enter the Summer of 2025 fresh off a 36-46 season in which they exceeded expectations but still fell short of making the NBA Playoffs (or any kind of significant dent in the league). That leaves them in an odd situation. If they were good or bad, their course forward would be easy to assess. Since they’re really neither, it’s hard to say definitively where they are, let alone what they need to do next. It’s the infamous Rorschach Test. What you take away from the evaluation depends largely on what you brought into it. If you hope they’re an up-and-coming young NBA power, you can probably justify that. If you think their roster is shaky and broken, teetering on the edge of futility, you’ve got an argument there too.

We’ve spent the last couple of days looking at Portland’s offense and defense by the numbers, exploring their statistical production this year. Like the team, the results were mixed. But I’m going to argue that those numbers actually give a pretty good description of where the Blazers are, far more helpful than our guesses in the midst of the current uncertainty.

A side trip: this is why it’s important to look at aggregate season numbers sometimes. One of the smart questions we got in the comments to those posts was this: “Why don’t you use splits to give a more accurate representation of how, or whether, the team grew throughout the year?” The question is valid, but it also betrays itself. Who says the presumption of growth or decline revealed by splits is true? We’re actually presuming the meaning behind those numbers, then using them to justify the need for slicing the statistics rather than looking at the statistics and drawing meaning from them.

If you look at a stat like, “The Blazers were 29th in turnovers at 16.0 per game,” the “16.0” part actually has little meaning. It’s not good or bad on its own. The only way we know 16 turnovers per game is bad is because, in the context of a full season, 28 of 29 other teams committed fewer, which is a pretty good indication that the Blazers aren’t great at taking care of the ball.

We could narrow down to the last two months of the season and say, “Portland committed only 14.5 turnovers per game during this 27-game stretch, and that’s 15th in the league, so they got better!” (PSA: That’s a made-up number.) But did they really get better? What else happened during that streak? Who did the Blazers face as opponents? Who did everyone else face? What was the travel schedule? Who was injured on each side? By narrowing down, we’re actually introducing extra noise that might cloud the overall picture rather than reveal it. Or maybe they did get better! The point is, we don’t really know.

People change context to find meaning all the time. Teams themselves engage in the practice. “Since January 15th our team has had the second-best defense in the league, behind only the Boston Celtics!” Or, “Only LeBron James has done what our rookie has done over the past six games!” OK, fair. That’s accurate as far as it goes. But your team is not the Boston Celtics and your rookie is not LeBron James. The Celtics are champions and LeBron is legendary in large part because they do what they do for entire seasons, for years at a time, with consistency and effort and excellence. That’s what it takes to win in this league. If your team and your players were really at that level, you wouldn’t have to say it. We’d already see and know it, just like we know it when we see LeBron and the Celts.

Sometimes the correct measure for how a team has done for a season is actually the entire season’s worth of performance, a known unit comparable to the seasons of all the other teams. No asterisks. No, “Since this or that mark!” It is what it is.

Circling back, this season’s numbers do a pretty good job of describing who the Blazers are. Portland is starting to excel in several targeted areas: offensive rebounding, forced turnovers, blocked shots. They’ve also generated more scoring in the paint and on the break and started to improve defending the paint as well. You can literally see this happening on the floor. It fits with their personnel changes and their evolution during the year. They’re not horrible at everything. They have a playing style defined by their athleticism, length, and young energy.

The Blazers also have glaring weaknesses like huge holes in the side of the ship: three-point shooting, overall percentage shooting, turnovers, point production, defensive rebounding, getting back on defense. Those aren’t accidents and they’re not going away. They’re also basic, foundational parts of the game. As long as these deficits persist, Portland won’t be able to compete on a high level.

The Blazers shouldn’t be called a bad team outright anymore. But the Blazers can’t call themselves good either. They’ve done something, but they’re well short of everything needed.

Why is this basic assessment helpful? It illuminates the path forward. Portland might hope that development of young players and continuity among the current squad will address some of these issues. But unless it addresses all of them—and that seems like a stretch—simply continuing onward with the same team isn’t going to be enough.

Let’s say it again: this team is not good. “But they had the second-best defense since…” BZZZZZTTTTT! This team. Is not. Good. It’s not bad either, but if we think that extending Deandre Ayton and Anfernee Simons this summer is going to leap Portland into contention, we’re probably in for a sobering awakening. The same holds true if we think that a single draft pick (short of a franchise-changing superstar) will cure all Portland’s ills.

The Blazers need huge point production, three-point shooting, guards who can get back on defense, and rebounders. They need these things in a fairly concentrated number of players, because they can’t displace many members of the current rotation without losing some of their strengths in the process.

After looking through the stats and the season, here are the questions foremost on my mind:

Where’s the star?
Where are the shooters?
Where are more shot-blocking, rebounding big men?
Where’s the point guard?

Through internal development, draft, or trade, Portland will need to address these questions if they’re going to take the next step. And honestly, the chances of addressing them seriously via trade (or even free agency in 2026) seem small. The Blazers are absolutely tethered to the young players already on the roster and beholden to future draft picks that might come on board. I don’t think any amount of turning numbers sideways or needle-threading is going to change that story.

If this season was any indication, the Trail Blazers are legitimately into their rebuild now and it’s off to a decent launch. But they aren’t going to exit it any time soon without some kind of spectacular event to accelerate it.

The good news is, they have picks and pick swaps on the horizon. And hey, we’re talking about definable strengths and weaknesses this year instead of saying, “What do they need? Basically everything.” Those are signs of progress. To get that far in a single season is pretty good.

But let’s hope the team doesn’t plan on camping here. That assessment of “pretty good” is relative to where the franchise has been the past couple years, not relative to the rest of the NBA or championship-level contention. They’re still behind the curve in the former and miles away from the latter. If they want to fix that, there’s as much work ahead of them as behind. Probably more. I’m not sure it matters which part of the “to-do” list they tackle this summer as long as they go after something that makes a real difference. But they better do something.

Coming Next: Individual player evaluations. Who grew, who stalled, and what still remains to be done for each member of Portland’s roster?