From Terry Porter’s gritty playmaking to the electrifying arrival of Ja Morant, trace the elite guard pairings that have fueled Portland’s championship dreams and iconic postseason runs.
With Ja Morant added in its latest chapter, the Portland Trail Blazers have a rich history of guards.
Portland's only championship came in 1977, with Bill Walton at the center of it. Since then, the Blazers have been defined by key players in the backcourt.
Geoff Petrie could be considered the first great guard to play for Portland before injuries derailed his career. He and Lionel Hollins became the first true engine of guards, helping the 1977 title team.
While the '80s and early '90s belonged to Clyde Drexler, what made the two finals runs in 1990 and 1992 happen was the guard next to him: Terry Porter.
Porter was selected with the 24th pick of the 1985 draft out of an NAIA program at Wisconsin-Stevens Point. He catalyzed those two runs and still leads the franchise in assists.
Porter was one of the most underrated pure point guards of his era, a two-time All-Star who ran Rick Adelman's offense with peak efficiency and toughness that never got the national attention Drexler did.
Porter, paired with Drexler and Jerome Kersey on the wing, gave Portland its most stable backcourt of the century, roughly a decade of shared minutes that no Blazers guard pairing has had since.
From 1995 to 2006, 11 years, Portland never found another guard to build an era around.
The "Jail Blazers" era saw an evolving door between Rod Strickland's playmaking after Porter's departure. Damon Stoudamire, the "Mighty Mouse" out of Arizona, gave Portland an electric change-of-pace scoring look. Stoudamire won the 1996 Rookie of the Year before injuries shortened his run.
The 2000 team won 59 games with Stoudamire and Steve Smith in the backcourt. That team was talented enough to make the Western Conference finals, but couldn't get past the mighty Los Angeles Lakers.
Brandon Roy entered in 2006 and briefly looked like the answer to everything. Drafted in 2006 and paired with a young LaMarcus Aldridge, Roy was a three-time All-Star and was incredibly smooth in the midrange.
For a few seasons, he and point guard Steve Blake looked like one of the best in the West. Chronic knee problems ended Roy's career at 27, forcing another reset.
Portland then drafted Damian Lillard six months after Roy was gone. CJ McCollum joined him a year later. In the mid-2010s, Dame and CJ were one of the most productive backcourt tandems in basketball, twice combining for over 4,000 points in a season.
In 2019, they carried Portland to the conference finals, the franchise's first since 2000.
Both were gone in 2023.
Three years later, a blend of eras has arrived in Portland. The Trail Blazers traded for two-time All-Star Morant this summer, and Lillard is back after working his way through a torn Achilles.
The last guard came home. The next guard has just arrived.
