The Portland Trail Blazers are using this season as a measuring stick for where the franchise is headed next, and that makes a few roster decisions especially important.
With Micah Nori stepping in as head coach and Ja Morant arriving in a trade with the Memphis Grizzlies during the offseason, Portland is in the middle of a transition. The Blazers also have just four players under contract this season who are not already on the books for 2027-28, and those players are fringe rotation pieces. That leaves a handful of names whose futures in Portland will be shaped by what happens over the coming months.
Scoot Henderson is one of them. He’s in the final year of his rookie deal and set to become a restricted free agent next summer.
At one point, he was viewed as the franchise point guard of the future, but he hasn’t fully matched that billing yet. His time in Portland has included both promising stretches and rough ones, though there’s still a path for him to trend upward this season.
The fit is complicated by the presence of Morant and Damian Lillard, who will keep Henderson out of the starting lineup. Even so, he has a chance to keep moving in the right direction.
During the 2025-26 season, he posted a career-low in minutes per game, but he also turned in the best scoring average of his career at 14.2 points per game. His efficiency has improved, and if he can settle into a steady role within the offense, Portland could still decide to lock him up with a long-term extension in the summer.
Yang is in a different spot, but his season matters just as much. The Blazers have a team option for the 2027-28 season that has to be picked up before the end of next month. Portland has reason to keep it, even after the No. 16 overall pick in the 2025 NBA draft struggled to get on the floor in his rookie year.
There’s no indication the Blazers are ready to move on from his contract yet. They view Yang as a development piece, and he needs more time to adjust to the NBA. If Portland declines the option, there’s a strong chance he won’t be on the roster by the start of next season.
Even if the team option gets exercised, Yang still has work to do. A jump from his rookie year to this one could put him in position to claim the backup center job next season ahead of Robert Williams III, who has only a partially-guaranteed deal for 2027-28.
Then there’s Avdija, whose future is even more lucrative. He won’t reach free agency until 2028, but this season will go a long way toward shaping the extension talks that could come next year. After an All-Star appearance in 2026, Avdija is entering the heart of his prime, and Portland would be wise to build around him.
The Blazers have him on a very team-friendly contract, which makes his production even more valuable right now. If he keeps playing at an All-Star level this season, he should be in line for something close to a max extension by summertime. If his numbers dip because Morant and Lillard take away some of his usage, his next payday might not reach its full ceiling.
For Portland, the big question is whether Avdija’s 2026 form was a one-off or the start of something bigger. This season should help answer that.
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Two Overlooked Blazers Picks Helped Define Portlands Best Era
The late-1980s and early-1990s stretch that still stands as the most resonant era in Trail Blazers history was shaped in part by two second-round finds who became far more than afterthoughts on draft night. Jerome Kersey spent 11 years in Portland and was a steady force on the teams that reached the NBA Finals in 1990 and 1992, while Clifford Robinson grew into one of the leagues most versatile contributors after arriving in 1989.
Robinson stayed with the Blazers through 1997, winning Sixth Man of the Year in 1993 and earning an All-Star nod the next season before moving on to several other NBA stops and finishing his career in 2007. Kersey, meanwhile, went on to play for other teams and later added a championship with the San Antonio Spurs, a reminder that Portlands best era was built not just on stars, but on draft value that outperformed every expectation. [Read more 🡒]
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For Portland, Lillards return comes with a different sort of backdrop, because the roster around him has changed enough to make the fit a real point of interest. The Blazers spent his absence reshaping the team, which means the challenge now is less about when he comes back and more about how the pieces are supposed to settle once he does. That makes his first months back one of the more closely watched storylines on the teams calendar. [Read more 🡒]