Armed with Ja Morant and a returning Damian Lillard, Portland’s aggressive offseason moves shift the goalposts from merely reaching the postseason to surviving the Western Conference gauntlet.
Getting back to the playoffs was the story of the Portland Trail Blazers' 2025-26 season. Staying there and winning a series is the story of this upcoming season.
The Trail Blazers broke a four-year postseason drought last spring, then took a game from the eventual Western Conference champion Spurs in the first round before their run ended.
Given where this roster started the year, that alone made the season a success. Although the season was a "success", the front office made moves this offseason that made it clear that the Trail Blazers are in a "win-now" mentality.
There's a version of this season where making the playoffs again is enough. That version realistically ended the moment Portland traded for Ja Morant and re-signed Robert Williams III to a three-year extension. Those aren't moves of a team content with plateauing and sneaking back into the play-in.
That was a real shift in what qualifies as progress on paper. Last season, just getting in was the achievement. This season, getting in and losing in the first round again would feel like a step sideways, not because the roster got worse, but because it got better.
Doing more than last year means facing the problems that last year's team never had to.
Damian Lillard returns from a torn Achilles that wiped out his entire 2025-26 campaign. How much can he realistically give a 36-year-old body over 82 games? And how much more he can give in a real playoff push remains an open question.
It also means figuring out a backcourt that got more talented and more crowded in the same offseason. Morant, Lillard, Scoot Henderson and Jrue Holiday are all fighting for the same minutes, with Shaedon Sharpe sidelined for the first half of the season.
Deni Avdija — an All-Star last season — plays his best basketball with the ball in his hands as well. Depth is a good issue to deal with. It's still a problem, and how coach Micah Nori solves it will say a lot about whether this team's ceiling actually improved or just got more crowded on paper.
Last year's Blazers had a clear story: overcome the Chauncy Billups chaos, make the playoffs anyway. This year's team doesn't have that story yet. It has talent, real expectations and a front office that spent the summer months betting on both.
This team's story gets written over the next several months, starting with how this deeper, more talented roster handles games that actually count. What comes next is proving that the conversation should be about more than just belonging.
