2024-25 Knicks Opponent: Portland Trail Blazers

09/15/2024 08:00 AM

Many big folks with little to no hope.

The Portland Trail Blazers' 2023-24 season was marred by injuries and a crystal-clear focus on the development of their young players albeit still employed a few grizzled veterans a la Malcolm Brogdon and Jerami Grant.

With key players like Robert Williams III, Anfernee Simons, Deandre Ayton, and the aforementioned Brogdon and Grant missing significant time due to injuries, the Blazers only managed 21 wins in another putrid year in the PDX, the third consecutive season missing the playoffs—all of them since the hiring of coach Chauncy Billups to lead the new post-Dame era of Portland basketball.

Despite the struggles, however, the Blazers have been slowly but surely restocking their roster with young talent mostly through the draft, including landing the likes of Scoot Henderson, Shaedon Sharpe, and Donovan Clingan as they still aim for the ultimate prize in consensus-best prospect Cooper Flagg come next draft.

Blazers' 2023-24 Record: 21-61, 15th in the Western Conference. Not a good season, to say the least. The Blazers finished tied for the third-worst record in the league and only above the mega-lowly Detroit Pistons (14 wins) and ultra-depressing Washington Wizards (15) in the NBA while matching Charlotte's subpar record. With no players having 10+ seasons of experience under contract and injuries limiting any and every player of the team to 55 starts at most, it's reasonable for this mob to do what they did.

Knicks' record against Blazers last season: 1-1

• January 9, 2024, vs. POR: Knicks won 112-84
• March 14, 2024, @ POR: Knicks won 105-93

The Knicks kicked their two-game series against the Blazers hosting Portland in Manhattan and needing only 12 minutes to beat them. You read that right. New York led 38-22 by the end of the first quarter and reached halftime leading 63-41, and coasted through the second half while still padding the margin on a per-minute basis.

By the end of the massacre, only Julius Randle topped 30 minutes of play in what would be one of his final games of the season before he called it a year at the end of January. He bagged 23 points to go with 7 boards and 8 dimes. Isiah Hartenstein was extraordinary pulling down 14 boards in Mitchell Robinson's absence and already established as the Knicks starter at the five.

Jalen Brunson scor—wait, let's save that for what came in March.

Forty-five pops on the day. See why I made you wait? Jalen Brunson took Portland by storm and dumped a near-50-burger on a hapless Blazers team that had no solution to the JB equation.

Brunson scored nearly half of New York's total points, did it in 37 minutes, filled his statline across the board (45-4-1-1-1) without committing a single personal foul, and shot 46.7% from the field and 88.2% from the free-throw line. Bananas.

The Knicks had a shorter-than-short bench at that time, and Alec Burks only contributed four minutes of relief off the pine, making the bench effectively a three-man unit featuring Precious Achiuwa, Deuce McBride, and Bojan Bogdanovic.

Blazers' offseason moves:

In: Deni Avdija, Devonte' Graham, Donovan Clingan (R)

Out: Malcolm Brogdon, Moses Brown

Blazers Projected Depth Chart:

PG: Scoot Henderson / Devonte' Graham / Dalano Banton
SG: Anfernee Simons / Kris Murray / Matisse Thybulle
SF: Deni Avdija / Shaedon Sharpe / Toumani Camara
PF: Jerami Grant / Jabari Walker
C: Deandre Ayton / Donovan Clingan / Robert Williams III

Where are the Blazers going? Nowhere, probably. As talented as some of the PDX players are, this squad still feels so deconstructed and improbable to put a solid season together as anyone across the association.

The addition of Deni Avdija is one I like a lot and one I'd have liked the Knicks to pursue (as it was reported at some point in the past few months), Graham is a nice veteran, and rookie big-man Clingan might outperform DominAyton in his first season as a pro.

Losing a stabilizer in Malcolm Brogdon sucks out of context but it's probably for the better of the organization looking at the future of the franchise with tank-tinted glasses, isn't it? Related: will this be the season Jerami Grant finally gets moved, granting Portland a few more chances at landing uber-prospect Cooper Flagg next summer?

Knicks / Blazers 2024-25 Schedule:

• Wednesday, Mar. 12, 2025: Knicks at Blazers, 10:00 PM ET
• Sunday, Mar. 30, 2025: Blazers at Knicks, 6:00 PM ET

Knicks' projected record against Portland this season: 2-0

With the Knicks' experience and physically demanding play, it's just impossible to see any other way than a sweep in favor of the New York lads.

This should be a fun couple of games, however, even if they end up in two more monster victories with huge scoreboard gaps. The Blazers have a nice squad full of youngins and they should do interesting stuff on the court, worth watching and (for me) recapping.

The Knicks have won three consecutive games against Portland and that'd be five in a row getting back to the end of the 2021-22 season had the Blazers not won an OT affair in Nov. 2022 by three points.