Trail Blazers Win 45+ Games En Route To Top Four Seed

There is no doubt that the Portland Trail Blazers will be going to their 8th consecutive playoffs, but this time, they will be a Top-4 seed in the Western Conference. While they have some questions on the defensive side of things, especially after losing Hassan Whiteside, who led the league in blocks per game last year, Portland will basically be in a sprint offensively with every team they face.

Opponents will have to try and outscore the Blazers rather than trying to stop them defensively, which will be an extremely difficult task. It may sound silly to say that one team will have to outscore the other to win, which is the main premises of the game of basketball, but there is really no stopping this Portland offense… teams will just have to hope they are better that night offensively. 

Portland’s top four scorers from a season ago, Lillard, McCollum, Nurkic and Anthony are four guys who can go out on any given night and put up 20+ points. We all know what Lillard and Melo can do one-on-one, but C.J. McCollum and Jusef Nurkic have also proved to be two high-level offensive players over the years. 

The only reason C.J. McCollum has not been an NBA All-Star because he plays the role of “Robin” to Lillard’s “Batman” and he is perfectly fine with it because he knows what he is capable of doing. In 70 regular season games last year, C.J. McCollum scored 20+ points in over 61% of those games and is a legit threat to be the top scorer on the Blazers on any given night. 

The Portland Trail Blazers will have one of the best offenses in the entire league this upcoming season and as a result, will finish as one of the best teams in the Western Conference. They have even more firepower and reliable scorers on this team this upcoming year and given their motivation, this team has a chance to be a legit title contender.