{"id":547424,"date":"2026-01-19T20:42:19","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T20:42:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/547424\/"},"modified":"2026-01-19T20:42:19","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T20:42:19","slug":"portland-trail-blazers-move-up-in-nba-power-rankings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/547424\/","title":{"rendered":"Portland Trail Blazers Move Up in NBA Power Rankings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup _1teeyfa8 ls9zuh1\">The Blazers are a league-best 8-2 in 2026, ranking in the top eight on both ends of the floor this month. Half of those wins have come against teams \u2013 San Antonio, Houston (x 2) and the Lakers \u2013 with winning records. L.A. was without Luka Don\u010di\u0107 on Saturday, but the Blazers were without Deni Avdija for that game and the two that preceded it. Offense has been a real struggle (101.4 points scored per 100 possessions) with Avdija off the floor, but Caleb Love had 22 points and seven assists off the bench against L.A., his 14th straight game in double-figures.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup _1teeyfa8 ls9zuh1\">Jerami Grant returned from a 14-game absence on Thursday, but he and Jrue Holiday both missed the Blazers\u2019 win in Sacramento on Sunday night, when Avdija returned from his three-game absence. So while the Blazers have outscored their opponents by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nba.com\/stats\/team\/1610612757\/lineups-advanced?CF=GROUP_NAME*E*Avdija:GROUP_NAME*E*Holiday:GROUP_NAME*E*Grant&amp;GroupQuantity=3\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">13.3 points per 100 possessions<\/a> in 133 minutes with Avdija, Grant and Holiday all on the floor, they still haven\u2019t all been available since Nov. 14 (Game 12). Matisse Thybulle hasn\u2019t played since October and Scoot Henderson still hasn\u2019t begun his third season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Blazers are a league-best 8-2 in 2026, ranking in the top eight on both ends of the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":547425,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3784],"tags":[7,601,37660,6,687,471,3967,1617],"class_list":{"0":"post-547424","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-portland-trail-blazers","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-blazers","10":"tag-blazers-news","11":"tag-nba","12":"tag-portland","13":"tag-portland-trail-blazers","14":"tag-portlandtrailblazers","15":"tag-trail-blazers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115923711129280286","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547424\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}