Portland Trail Blazers 2026-27 NBA Preseason Preview

Blazers’ Biggest Offseason Loss: Jerami Grant

The Blazers’ lone market-moving trade of the offseason was to ship out Jerami Grant and Kris Murray for the tantalizing Ja Morant. 

Morant’s struggles in Memphis are well-documented. He needed a fresh start. Overall, Portland fans are happy to give him one. But his skills are redundant to what the Blazers already have.

What Portland sent out in the form of Grant and Murray could be considered addition by subtraction. Particularly after his abysmal 2024-25 campaign, a subset of Blazers fans had given up on Grant, who was considered one of the worst contracts in the NBA. Murray was a great defender and solid rebounder, but his offensive game is like watching toddlers play pin the tail on the donkey.

The issue with losing Grant and Murray doesn’t come in the form of their individual impacts; it’s the fact that the Blazers failed to find their replacements. Two wings who were capable-to-good defenders are valuable assets in today’s NBA. Portland is now thin at that position.

The other candidate for biggest loss is Shaedon Sharpe’s meniscus. The 23-year-old shooting guard underwent surgery at the end of August to repair a tear in his knee and will be out until likely past the All-Star break.

Blazers’ Biggest Offseason Addition: Damian Lillard

Nominating Lillard for the Blazers’ biggest offseason addition is slightly cheating; the aforementioned Morant is surely the biggest addition to the roster from this past offseason.

However, the player who did not play for the team last season but will this upcoming season who will make the biggest impact is Damian Lillard.

Morant has more to prove and earn in Rip City. He may find himself as the spiritual leader of this franchise someday, but that would take some time. Lillard already embodies the Blazers’ ethos and then some.

What Lillard also brings, that Morant does not, is three-point gravity, something the Blazers lacked almost entirely last year (if one player had it, it was Grant). Lillard’s long-range lethality will help the team’s offense tremendously. If he and Morant can avoid being the worst defensive backcourt in the NBA, things should click pretty well.

Blazers’ Best-Case Scenario Outcome

The following statement can be applied to every sports team ever, but it’s particularly true of the Portland Trail Blazers this year: They have a high ceiling if they can stay healthy.

The reason health is paramount for Portland is twofold. 

First, their backcourt consists of Lillard, a 36-year-old coming off of an Achilles tear; Scoot Henderson, who tore his hamstring before last season and played just 30 total games; Morant, who has played 79 total games over the past three years; and Jrue Holiday, the 36-year-old who’s logged over 1000 total games in his career.

Second, because of the decision to add Morant and subtract Grant and Murray, the Blazers have guard depth but lack wing depth. Toumani Camara and Deni Avdija must stay healthy for the large majority of the season if Portland wants to succeed. Otherwise, things could get shaky.

But if they stay relatively healthy, this is a deep and talented roster. The fit might be odd, particularly at first against a tougher early-season schedule, but fit doesn’t matter as much during the regular season. The Blazers will be able to play fast and overwhelm teams with a revolving barrage of Avdija, Lillard and Morant. 

Playoffs in Portland?

In a best-case scenario, Portland should have enough defensive and offensive firepower to stay firmly above .500 and have a chance down the stretch to earn a top-six seed in the Western Conference. If that happens, and the Blazers avoid playing OKC or the Spurs in the first round, then a playoff series win is possible, but given teams can load up on Portland’s flaws in the postseason, it’s hard to see anything going further than that this year for Rip City.

Blazers’ Worst-Case Scenario Outcome

If the Blazers do suffer the wrong injuries, or if the Morant experiment flames out quickly, or if Lillard is just not what he was before the Achilles injury (all of which are very possible), then this Blazers’ season could turn sour in a hurry.

The wing depth behind Camara and Avdija is poor; the team is counting on a leap from Sidy Cissoko or a resurgence from Jeremy Sochan to shore up their issues there. Micah Potter and Branden Carlson are two new additions who can suffice here and there when necessary, but it’s hard to picture them fulfilling long-term solutions.

Teams will pick on Morant and Lillard as a defensive duo. It doesn’t matter how much they can create for others and themselves on offense if they get torn apart by the Doncic-Reaves or Castle-Harper or SGA-J-Dub backcourts.

This is a young team with a lot of potential, but also a lot of clear flaws. The range of outcomes for the Portland Trail Blazers next season is larger than most. A bottom-half-of-the-play-in finish in the regular season could lead to them missing the playoffs entirely.

Blazers’ Biggest Question Heading Into 2026-27 Season

The Blazers’ biggest question for the start of their season is whether Morant and Lillard, and to a degree Avdija, can coexist. There’s only one basketball, and all three players are good with the ball in their hands. If they can learn to play off of each other, the sky is the limit. If the presence of one diminishes the value of another, then this team may quickly find itself sputtering.