The Portland Trail Blazers will enter 2025-26 season with a revamped roster. They’ll hope to improve on their 36 wins last season, a reasonable assumption considering they’ve acquired both depth and experience in the offseason. But how ready will they be when the ball tips in October compared to recent seasons? That’s the subject of today’s Blazer’s Edge Mailbag.

Dave,

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I’m cautiously optimistic that we’ve finally cracked the code on roster building. For the last five seasons we’ve had alot of transition and imbalance. Now I’m seeing a good mix of youth and age plus depth at every position. With a little growth and a little luck I think we’re in the playoffs at least. What’s your assessment of the roster construction now?

James

It’s hard to do a traditional depth chart in today’s NBA. “Positionless basketball” hasn’t taken over completely, but the roles of point guard, shooting guard, et al. are somewhat antiquated now. That’s particularly true for the Blazers, who feature three point guards (if Damian Lillard is healthy), one small forward, and now a center, all of whom can serve as play initiators.

That said, we can still gather pools of players under large umbrellas. Portland’s would look like this. I’m only going to name major players for now, understanding that some roster members may join around the periphery.

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Guards: Scoot Henderson, Shaedon Sharpe, Jrue Holiday, (Damian Lillard), Matisse Thybulle, Rayan Rupert

Forwards: Deni Avdija, Jerami Grant, Toumani Camara, Kris Murray

Centers: Donovan Clingan, Yang Hansen, Robert Williams III, Duop Reath

You’re correct that the Blazers have a reasonable amount of depth. They’re lacking, numerically, at the forward positions. That’s one remaining area of concern as far as roster balance.

We can fudge a little bit by calling the bigger guards “wings” and positing some of them taking forward minutes, but it’s an open question whether Shaedon Sharpe, for instance, is a small forward and whether the Blazers would be messing with his development by having him play multiple positions or roles.

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We could also backfill the forward positions the other way, saying Robert Williams or even Yang Hansen (!) could play at power forward, but the question there is whether they’d mess with their teammates playing center and/or inhibit the smaller scorers by allowing defenses to clog up the middle against their lack of three-point shooting.

Side Note: People tend to underrate the importance of distance shooting when it comes to “positionless” basketball. Scoring range allows a player to threaten defenses from larger areas of the floor. If your power forward and shooting guard can both hit corner threes, it doesn’t really matter which you send out there. If your shooting guard can but your forward can’t, he is then limited to operating closer to the basket and thus becomes more of a traditional power forward than a modern “positionless” player. The Blazers don’t have a lot of three-point shooting. That means they’re going to have more trouble interchanging players on offense than you think, even though they might be rangy and tall and able to defend multiple places.

Portland’s need right now is pretty clear. Unless Kris Murray develops enough offense to be able to stay on the court, Jerami Grant, Deni Avdija, and Toumani Camara need to stay healthy and play big minutes. If all three can produce, Portland has some version of the Clyde Drexler-Terry Portler-Danny Ainge guard trio, just at the forward spots. If anybody gets injured or doesn’t produce (as many fear will happen with Grant), suddenly Portland’s forward corps is paper thin, the reserves mismatched.

The other area of concern is shooting guard production. The names are pretty weighty on that guard list, especially when compared to the last few seasons, but if Shaedon Sharpe bombs, what do the Blazers do? Scoot Henderson could be supplanted by Jrue Holiday at point. Holiday could also play shooting guard, but he’s unlikely to replace the raw scoring Sharpe is expected to deliver. Avdija could slide to shooting guard and maybe score big, but that leaves the forward roster even thinner. There’s going to be pressure on Sharpe to deliver a good season. If not, he becomes the Jenga piece that could make Portland’s tower of depth collapse when pulled.

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Overall, then, I’d say that the Blazers are in good position relative to recent rosters, but not an unassailable one. Plenty of things have to go right for that depth to matter, including a couple specific ones for Sharpe and Grant. The chances of it turning out well are better, but the chances of failing aren’t gone yet.

Thanks for the question! You can always send yours to blazersub@gmail.com and we’ll try to answer as many as possible!