The Detroit Pistons were last year's Cinderella story in the regular season, drastically increasing their win total from 14 to 44. Although not quite to that extent, there's a legitimate chance that next season's version of that team is the Portland Trail Blazers. That's the prediction that The Ringer's Chris Vernon recently made on The Mismatch podcast.
Portland is trending in the right direction as a team looking to build off a 15-win improvement from last season. One significant difference between them and Detroit is the unfortunate and obvious fact that the Blazers aren't in the Eastern Conference.