Robin Lopez doesn’t have much faith in the Lakers landing near the top of the Western Conference this season, and he went even further than most by slotting them behind the Portland Trail Blazers.
On Thursday’s edition of The Association, the former NBA big man laid out his top six in the West and put Los Angeles at No. 6.
“My sixth pick, I have the LA Lakers,” Lopez said. “Walker Kessler, good pick for them.
Five, Nuggets… Number four, I have the Portland Trail Blazers… Three, I have the Thunder. Two, I have the T-Wolves, and one, I have the San Antonio Spurs.”
That’s a list with a few surprises, but the biggest one is the Blazers over the Lakers. Lopez is not the first person to push Los Angeles down the board, though he may be the first to place Portland ahead of them. The Trail Blazers haven’t cracked the top four in the West during the 2020s, yet Lopez made the case that the conference is softer and that Portland has enough moving pieces to climb.
“This was a play-in team last year,” Lopez said. “The West has gotten worse.
LeBron James has departed. He headed East.
Kawhi Leonard headed East. The Warriors are no longer ascendant.
It’s a youthful West, and this is a team that has Damian Lillard coming back… They picked up what seems like, for a discount, Ja Morant. It’s a wild card.
But if he’s in his right mind state, he’s a top-five, top-ten player in the NBA paired with Damian Lillard.”
Lillard is already drawing attention for how he’s looked on the court after missing all of last season with a torn Achilles. Morant, though, is a much harder sell as a player expected to reach those heights.
The two-time All-Star has not been viewed as a universal top-10 talent, much less a top-five one. Maybe there was a window in 2022, when he finished seventh in MVP voting with the Memphis Grizzlies, but that version of Morant has not been around in a long time. That is part of why the Trail Blazers only had to part with Jerami Grant and Kris Murray to get him.
Portland head coach Micah Nori has already said there’s no reason to start Lillard and Morant together because both are not strong defenders, though the pair has still opened preseason games side by side. Whether that stays the case remains to be seen.
What does seem set is that Deni Avdija will be in the starting lineup and carrying a major load. Avdija made his first All-Star team in 2026, and Lopez - who played for Portland from 2013 to 2015 - cited him and Jrue Holiday while backing up his Portland pick.
“They already had an All-Star last year with the ascendancy of Deni Avdija,” Lopez said. “He is an All-Star.
And then you have Jrue Holiday, one of the most underrated players in the entire league. He was in Milwaukee when they won a championship.
He was in Boston when they won a championship.
“They have a new head coach,” Lopez continued. “… They have Donovan Clingan. Donovan Clingan is the type of big man you need to have to win in this league.”
There is some real talent in Portland’s mix. The Blazers finished 42-40 in 2025-26, took eighth in the West, and then beat the Phoenix Suns in the play-in tournament to claim the No. 7 seed.
Still, jumping from that level to the top four would be a major leap.
And finishing above the Lakers would be a surprise in its own right. Even with their issues, Los Angeles still has Luka Doncic, one of the league’s premier players.
They also added Walker Kessler to give themselves the rim protection they badly needed. It’s not a flawless roster, but the Lakers did go 53-29 and finish fourth in the West last season, and similar results are expected again.
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It matters even more because the concerns do not stop at guard. Portland is thinner on the wing and at forward after offseason departures and injuries, including Shaedon Sharpes knee surgery, which has made depth a more pressing issue across the lineup. General manager Joe Cronin has pointed to Holidays versatility as part of the solution, and for now the Blazers appear to be leaning on that kind of adaptability as they try to stabilize a roster with a few moving parts. [Read more 🡒]
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The timing matters because Henderson is headed toward restricted free agency after this season unless the Blazers lock in a rookie contract extension before October 19. With Damian Lillard and Jrue Holiday in the guard room, Portland is already balancing present-day rotation decisions with a longer-term call on Henderson, and his strong start is making that choice harder to push down the road. [Read more 🡒]