Last Week:15
2023-24 record: 21-61
OffRtg: 107.6 (29) DefRtg: 116.6 (23) NetRtg: -9.0 (28) Pace: 97.9 (21)
Key addition(s): Deni Avdija, Donovan Clingan
Key departure(s): Malcolm Brogdon
Three numbers to know:
The Blazers had just four wins (they were 4-41) in games that weren’t within five points in the last five minutes. That was the lowest total for any team in the last nine seasons.
Their opponents shot 61.3% in the paint, the highest opponent mark in the 28 seasons for which we have shot-location data.
They got 52.7% of their minutes, the league’s highest rate by a wide margin, from rookies or second-year players.
Key question: How much does Scoot Henderson improve?
The two teams that got more than 50% of their minutes from rookies or second-year players in 2022-23 – Houston and Oklahoma City – were the league’s two most improved teams last season. But the Blazers didn’t make big changes like the Rockets a year ago, and they don’t have stars on the level of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Jalen Williams.
They do have a pair of guards, though-Henderson and Shaedon Sharpe-who could make big leaps in the next nine months. Given how much Henderson struggled as a rookie – last in effective field goal percentage among 174 players with 500 field goal attempts, second worst on-court NetRtg among 222 players who averaged .at least 20 minutes per game – he has nowhere to go but up. It would be somewhat of a shock if this wasn’t a fourth straight season in the bottom three of the Western Conference, but real improvement out of the young guards would make the long-term outlook a heck of a lot brighter
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