Deni Avdija's first summer as an NBA All-Star was supposed to be about consolidation. Instead, voices in Portland's own press corps are asking whether the Trail Blazers have spent it dismantling the very conditions that made his breakout possible.
The sharpest version of that argument comes from Rip City Project, a Portland-focused analysis site, where writer Reese Kunz contends the front office has failed to surround Avdija with complementary pieces. The Israeli forward thrived last season precisely because the offence ran through his hands, the piece argues, and the club's headline summer acquisition, Ja Morant, is another ball-dominant guard rather than the connective shooting Portland actually needed.
The transaction itself is not in dispute. On 29 June, Memphis sent Morant to Portland in exchange for Jerami Grant and Kris Murray, with the Grizzlies adding cash considerations in a deal that cost the Blazers no draft capital. Morant, the 2020 Rookie of the Year and a two-time All-Star, carries a career average of 22.4 points per game, but injuries and suspensions have limited him to 79 appearances across the past three seasons.
Fit, not price, is the objection. Morant "is at his best with the ball in his hands and can't effectively space the floor for Deni," Kunz writes, a genuine concern for a player who led the league in drives last season as Portland's primary initiator. The backcourt already houses Damian Lillard and Jrue Holiday, and by Rip City Project's reckoning six players now hold credible claims on five starting places, to the point that the site has floated bringing the newest arrival off the bench.
What the critics fear being disrupted is considerable. Avdija averaged 24.2 points, 14th in the league, with 6.9 rebounds and 6.7 assists in 2025-26, earned his first All-Star selection and carried Portland to a 42-40 record and its first playoff berth since 2021. The ledger had a debit side too: the Blazers were the league's worst turnover team, with Avdija's own giveaways inflated by his playmaking load, a price the Portland analysis considered worth paying to discover his best version.
There is a concession within the criticism. The first-round exit to San Antonio, in which the Spurs shaded Avdija off his right hand and sharply cut his assist production, showed he "can't be the 1a option on a contending roster," Kunz acknowledges. But the counter is that Portland's newcomers are not demonstrably better than him either, leaving, in this reading, a roster full of big names, a muddled hierarchy and a capped ceiling rather than a clear structure built around or above its franchise player.
The riddle now passes to Micah Nori, appointed head coach on 23 June on a single guaranteed year with two team options, after interim coach Tiago Splitter parlayed his own 42-40 season into the Chicago Bulls job. Nori, a long-serving Minnesota assistant, inherits an abundance of creators, thin spacing and a mandate to shrink the turnover count without shrinking Avdija.
For Israeli basketball the stakes are plain. Avdija is the country's flagship NBA presence, and his leap into stardom made Portland appointment viewing back home. Whether Morant's arrival complements that role or compresses it will be among the more consequential subplots of the Blazers' pre-season, and it says something that Portland's own observers are already flagging the danger in unusually blunt terms.
