Deni Avdija spent the second half of last season carrying Portland almost single-handedly. Now the Trail Blazers have to work out what to do with him just as the roster around him has suddenly become overloaded with scoring options. ONE frames it as the one thing still missing before Portland can be taken seriously as a genuine championship contender: a clear hierarchy among the team's alpha players.
The Blazers head into 2026-27 with three players capable of being a team's primary option. Damian Lillard is back in Portland on a three-year, $42 million contract with a no-trade clause after being waived by Milwaukee, and is targeting a full return from the ruptured Achilles tendon that ended his 2025 campaign. Ja Morant arrived from Memphis in a trade agreed in late June that sent Jerami Grant and Kris Murray the other way. And then there is Avdija himself, who broke out as an All-Star last season while Lillard was sidelined and Portland's other guards were hurt.
That, according to ONE, is exactly the problem general manager Joe Cronin has created. The report says Cronin has built a deep, talented squad without settling who is Portland's true No. 1 option, who is the No. 2, and who fills out the third tier — with too few clearly defined role players beyond forward Toumani Camara and young center Donovan Clingan to balance out so many shot-creators.
Avdija's case is not in question statistically. He averaged 25.5 points, 7.2 rebounds and 6.7 assists a game last season on 47/36/80 shooting splits, taking over as Portland's primary ball-handler and shot-creator after Jrue Holiday went down with a calf strain and Scoot Henderson was already out with a hamstring injury. It earned him his first All-Star selection — a landmark for Israeli basketball — and, on ONE's assessment, leaves him in the strongest position of the three to be the Trail Blazers' long-term centerpiece.
Whether that holds once Lillard and Morant are both healthy and on the floor is the question ONE poses without answering. Lillard turned 36 this month and has not played since April 2025, so few expect him to instantly reclaim the shot volume that made him a nine-time All-Star the first time he wore a Portland jersey. Morant, for his part, has played only 79 games across three injury- and incident-hit seasons since his last All-Star year in 2023, and has spoken of the move west as a chance to start over.
Portland also enters the season under a new head coach after an unusually turbulent offseason. Micah Nori, previously the lead assistant in Minnesota, was hired after Chauncey Billups was arrested by the FBI in the autumn as part of a wide-ranging illegal gambling investigation and never returned to the bench.
ONE quotes Nori laying out how he wants his team to play: "We won't be a team that sits and hopes the opponent misses. We'll force opponents into tough shots. Offensively, as long as the clock is running, we'll run too. We won't pull out the ball, look to the bench and wait for set plays. We'll play at a high pace and with clear spacing."
That up-tempo identity is, in part, a bet that Portland's glut of shot-creators can coexist better in transition and space than in a slower, half-court pecking order. It also raises the stakes on training camp: with Lillard, Morant and Avdija potentially all healthy together for the first time, Nori will have to decide quickly who closes games and who plays off the ball.
For now, Avdija looks like the safer bet of the three. He is 25, owed a modest $24 million over the next two seasons on the extension he signed after arriving from Washington, and comes into camp as the incumbent All-Star rather than a returning veteran managing an Achilles injury or a newcomer still learning a new system.
How Portland resolves the hierarchy around him, ONE argues, will determine whether last season's run to the playoffs — the franchise's first postseason appearance since 2021 — was the start of something bigger, or a ceiling reached with too many stars and not enough order.
