Deni Avdija hasn’t been the playoff riser that Portland needed.
The Portland Trail Blazers are currently in a 3-1 hole in their opening-round playoff series against the San Antonio Spurs, which isn’t all that surprising given the circumstances.
The Spurs were the second-best team in the NBA by record this season, while Portland snuck into the playoffs through the play-in tournament. If the Blazers were going to have any chance of pulling off a massive upset in this series, it was always going to come down to Deni Avdija reaching another level.
To be clear, Portland’s two most recent losses go well beyond just Avdija. The Blazers held double-digit leads in both games and still let them slip away. That’s a team-wide issue. But anytime an underdog pulls off an upset of this caliber in the playoffs, there’s usually a superhero-level performance from its best player.
Avdija has been good in this series. He’s been Portland’s best player. But he hasn’t quite been that unexpected superstar hero the Blazers likely needed him to be.
Through the first four games of the series, Avdija is averaging 22.3 points, 6.8 rebounds and 5.0 assists, but he’s also turning the ball over 3.3 times per game. He’s shooting 42.9% from beyond the arc, which is excellent, but just 44.4% from the field overall as he’s struggled inside the arc. He’s also shooting 75% from the free throw line.
Those are solid numbers, but they don’t represent the type of playoff elevation Portland probably needed to make this a real series. If Avdija had been able to rise to the occasion the way he did in the play-in tournament, averaging closer to 28 or 30 points while doing it on a much more efficient clip, this might be a completely different series.
That’s not to say Avdija hasn’t been good. It’s not to say he isn’t a star-level player, either. He is. But in a series where Portland is facing a clear talent deficit against a Spurs team this good, the Blazers needed more than good.
They needed great.
That shows up not only in Avdija’s individual numbers, but also in the team results when he’s been on the floor. Through the first four games, he has a minus-11.3 box plus-minus, which is the second-worst mark on the team behind only Jerami Grant.
Again, Avdija deserves praise for how steady he’s been in this series. He’s been the Blazers’ best player and has continued to produce against an elite opponent.
But the reality is simple, and it’s that he hasn’t been the superhero-level player Portland needed to pull off an upset.