Zena Keita, Es Baraheni, and Andrew Schlecht recently predicted the NBA teams that would outperform their over/under win total projections on The Athletic NBA Daily, one of which was the Portland Trail Blazers. Portland is currently projected for a slight decrease in wins compared to last year's 36-46 team, at 33.5 games.
"33.5 feels disrespectful to a team that kind of figured things out last year," Baraheni said, highlighting the Blazers being a "defensive juggernaut" as a reason for optimism.
"I understand that there will be offensive concerns since they lost Anfernee Simons and Deandre Ayton.