Back in December, our own Adrian Bernecich asked a simple question: are the Blazers winning too much? At the time, he wasn’t stressing it… but he had a caveat:

If they somehow rattle off a six-win game streak over the next month, then we may need to re-assess, but for now, there’s nothing to be concerned about.

A little over a month later, the Portland Trail Blazers have done the unthinkable and have won six of their last seven. Therefore, Conor and I had to revisit the question on the latest episode of We Like the Blazers.

We took different tacks: I don’t think it’s a big deal. Conor thinks they should be losing more. Our conversation about it started at 16:27 (time linked in the video below):

Conor: I will say yes [the Blazers are winning too much], but with the caveat of who they’re playing and how long they’re playing. I am of the mind that if the youth… are the guys playing all those minutes… I don’t think you can complain because they need to be developed. And at that point, do you just want to sit those guys down?… The fact that it’s Jerami Grant and Anfernee Simons and Deandre Ayton, and these guys are getting the bulk of the minutes while Kris Murray and Rayan Rupert are barely even playing, and they’re barely beating a bad Charlotte team, that’s when I think ‘what is going on?’

Brandon: The Blazers are not winning too much. It’s simple math, Conor. How many generational talents are in this 2025 draft? One? One and a half?… at some point, around where the Blazers are, it does become statistically meaningfully less likely that they’ll get a top four pick. A lot of my argument is predicated on there aren’t four players who are really going to change the direction of your franchise… [but] I need people to go to Tankathon or to whatever and really study [the lottery odds] and then go to Google and, I don’t know, do a dice roll thing or an odds simulator, or even hit the simulator on Tankathon. I want you to do that for five minutes straight, and I want people to get ingrained into all the various folds of their [brain]… that the lottery odds are flatter than perhaps we give them credit for.

We also talked about Dame’s return to Portland being less exciting that we would have thought, a brief touch on free agency ahead of the Feb. 6 trade deadline, and more!

Find us at WeLikeTheBlazers.com, now on BlueSky at @WeLikeTheBlazers.com, and ALL podcast and streaming apps. We Like the Blazers is a proud member of the Rogue Media Network and the Blazer’s Edge Family of podcasts, which includes Trail Daddy with Dave Deckard and Rip City Roundtable with Cory Dickman.