The Portland Trail Blazers’ 2024-25 season has ended. The ups and downs were significant from a team perspective, with painful losses and glorious winning streaks intertwined.

Over the next couple weeks we’re going to move from the team view down to individual reviews of Blazers players, looking at their successes and struggles, predicting what might lie ahead for them as well.

We’re going to start the process with one of the more intriguing of Portland’s young prospects, point guard Scoot Henderson. Here’s the skinny on the season that was for Scoot with a look at what’s next on the “to-do” list.

The Good

After a rookie season that can charitably be described as disastrous, Henderson rebounded into a serviceable NBA player in his sophomore year. Most of his improvement came on the offensive end of the court.

His field goal percentage rose from 38.5% to 41.9%.
His three-point percentage rose from 32.5% to 35.4%, that while taking 43.4% of his shots from distance this year, up from roughly a third last year.
His two-point field goal percentage rose from an abysmal 41.6% to 46.9%.
Unsurprisingly, then, his effective field goal percentage rose from 44.0% to 49.6%.

In addition, his turnovers per 100 possessions dropped from a league-worst 5.9 last season to 4.9 this year.

This year the Blazers were able to play Henderson for game-related reasons instead of throwing him out there for developmental purposes and praying. His improvement in three-point shooting was impressive, particularly given the increased volume. That alone made Henderson more playable in Portland’s scheme, which requires passing and floor-stretching to open up the middle for penetration from Shaedon Sharpe, Deni Avdija, and Henderson himself.

Most of Henderson’s other stats stayed steady, so he didn’t lose anything as his offensive game blossomed. His defense is still a work in progress but he didn’t look, or perform, worse than Portland’s other guards.

Henderson’s second NBA season will make his rookie campaign a memory, referenced only academically. He’s no longer “that guy”, a cautionary tale about draft hype. He worked himself out of a deep hole without losing confidence. That’s admirable for a player who’s still young, inexperienced, and carrying massive expectations.

The Bad

To the last decimal point and rounding error, the numbers we’ve just cited come under the category of “good for Scoot, modest at best for the NBA”. Henderson isn’t a disaster. He also isn’t a star. In some categories he barely approaches average.

Even filtering out players who didn’t see the floor enough to matter, Henderson still wouldn’t crack the Top 100 in effective field goal percentage, three-point percentage, or two-point percentage.

Despite the improvement, Henderson is still 7th in the NBA in turnovers per 100 possessions (as in, 7th-worst). He’s 23rd in assists per 100 possessions, which isn’t bad, but the miscues take the glow off of that achievement.

There may not be as much to criticize this season, but there also isn’t a ton to ride on. Hardly a stat stands out as notable. What is Scoot doing here? What does he bring that nobody else does? We still don’t know.

The Analysis

We know that Henderson isn’t a bust now. Not falling into that pit is an accomplishment. It doesn’t clear up the considerable fog surrounding the young point guard, though. He played the role of a serviceable bench player this season. That appears to be about where his production leaves him. Both draft position and athletic ability would suggest he become a starter. We’re still not seeing a ton of evidence that the promotion is viable.

Finding out who Scoot is not hasn’t told us who Scoot is. Signs of growth—and enthusiasm surrounding same—should be moderated by the global picture. The Blazers have had plenty enough of “pretty good for Portland”. They need excellence, period.

What’s Next?

Henderson’s upward trend is encouraging. Now that he has a more reasonable baseline to work with, we’ll need to see what happens in his third season. If he’s going to come into his own, it should happen around Year Four. The distance between him and star-level play is still vast. Could he become a regular started next year, though?

Part of the answer to that question depends on what the Blazers do with Anfernee Simons, the guard ahead of Henderson in the rotation. Simons is less of a true point guard in theory, but Henderson isn’t exactly Chris Paul himself. If Simons stays with the franchise long-term, it squeezes out Henderson or fellow guard Sharpe. In theory, Henderson’s fate shouldn’t rest so strongly on that of another player, but that’s where we are.

Until this gets sorted out, Blazers fans will have to hold onto two grading systems to evaluate Henderson fairly. On a curve, measured against himself and teammates, he gets a B+ or A- for the year. On an absolute scale, measured against the rest of the league, he’s down to C+ level. It’ll be up to him to merge those grades, if given the chance. Until then, the growth curve continues. Henderson shored up the floor this year, but we still don’t have a good picture of the ceiling, nor of where he’ll fall on average in the space between them,