Trail Blazers Still Seeking Their Star

In a recent post, we asked readers to identify the best player for the Portland Trail Blazers in the season to come. The results are in. The response was overwhelming for Deni Avdija. The vast majority of commenters affirmed that the starting small forward was the brightest light in Portland’s constellation right now, with a few votes for Shaedon Sharpe, who was at least a mild favorite for becoming the best player three years down the road.

The results of the survey weren’t surprising, but they did bring up a question in my mind. Is Deni Avdija truly a #1 player, someone a team can hitch their wagon to for the long haul?

I love Avdija’s game and enthusiasm. He’s got everything you’d want: defense, hustle and speed, court savvy. He’s one of those players who could plug into just about any lineup anywhere and contribute. His inaugural season in Portland last year opened the eyes of not just Blazers fans, but the entire NBA to that fact.

But is Avdija a star, or are the Trail Blazers still searching for the player who will lead them onward?

Status in professional sports is relative. If the whole rest of the league wins 40-41 games and you win 50, you’re the best. If six teams win 60, that 50-win total isn’t as impressive.

This is also true of talent and stardom. “Best option” is measured against other players in your generation. It doesn’t matter how Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson would fare today or back in 1965. They were the best of their contemporaries, thus transcendent superstars.

I don’t think anyone expects Avdija to reach those heights, but what happens if we compare him to other potential “best players” on their teams? How might he, and the Blazers, rank on the stardom ladder?

Pursuing this question, I did a quick run through the league, identifying players on each team who are definitely closer to stardom than Deni. The list is not exhaustive. I didn’t put down every player on every team who might exceed him. I just looked at the top 1-2 players for each franchise, asking if they were obviously ahead of Avdija.

The criteria I used to determine “ahead” were a combination of production/stats and impact, leavened with the question, “Could the Blazers conceivably trade Avdija for this player 1-for-1, disregarding contract considerations?” If the answer was clearly, “No,” then that player made the list.

Here’s the list of teams with more prominent, productive stars than Avdija.

In addition, here are a half-dozen players that could go either way, depending on how you looked at them and Deni:

Long story short, that’s at least 20, and up to 26, teams who have a better top end than the Blazers have right now. That would seem to indicate that Portland is still very much in the market for a big-time player.

Note that this is NOT an indictment of Deni Avdija, his talent, skills, or contributions. As we said above, he’s amazing! Love having him on the team. His name is only in this slot because he was the consensus “best player in Portland” pick. The point is not that Avdija is lacking, rather that the Trail Blazers probably still have some serious building to do around him.

It might be interesting, if more speculative, to go through the list again, presuming Shaedon Sharpe develops into a 20-point scorer in three years. What players would still forecast to be ahead of him, or at least at that level still?

Offhand I’d say Tatum, Brown, Maxey, Brunson, Mitchell, Mobley, Cunningham, Haliburton, Antetokounmpo, Banchero, Edwards, Gilgeous-Alexander, Doncic, Booker, Morant, Jackson Jr., and Wembanyama would all qualify. Plus you then have to account for Cooper Flagg, Dylan Harper, and new draftees. That’s 17-20 players we can reasonably forecast to exceed even the brightest hopes in Portland.

It’s been a summer of change for the Blazers. It’s been a summer of excitement too! At the end of the day, they may be right back looking for the same thing they have been: a little luck, a great trade, or some kind of unforeseen leap from one of their existing players to take them to the next level.