Trail Blazers: the offseason so far
the record
The desk keeps a day-by-day record of everything that happens to the Portland Trail Blazers: results with the players who decided them, injury changes, roster moves, reports, milestones and the schedule ahead. The story of the offseason is written from that record every week; the timeline below is the record itself, each line linked to the page that proves it.
The projection
all 30 teams →The season depends most on Jrue Holiday (9.6 wins without him), Toumani Camara (5.9 wins without him), Robert Williams III (3.2 wins without him), Deni Avdija (1.7 wins without him) and Donovan Clingan (1.5 wins without him): on/off from 2025-26, details under Injuries. Computed Thu, Sep 10; the method is on the methods page.
Day by day
1 days on the recordThe franchise today
Updated 2026-09-09Now
Micah Nori takes over as head coach, hired June 24, 2026, after a year in which Tiago Splitter ran the team on an interim basis. The core he inherits: Deni Avdija, Toumani Camara, Jrue Holiday, Shaedon Sharpe, Donovan Clingan, Scoot Henderson, Vít Krejčí, and now Ja Morant, across a 19-man roster averaging 25.7 years old. Avdija came in a 2024 draft-night trade with Washington; Clingan was drafted 7th that same night; Camara arrived in the September 2023 deal that sent Damian Lillard to Milwaukee; Sharpe was the 7th pick in 2022 and Henderson the 3rd pick in 2023. On June 29, 2026, Portland traded Jerami Grant and Kris Murray to Memphis for Morant. Last season the Blazers went 42-40, with an offense that ranked 21st and a defense that ranked 11th, and a net rating of -0.4 that placed 19th of 30. Payroll sits at $194.5M across 16 contracts, over the $165.0M cap, under the $200.4M tax line and below both aprons at $209.0M and $221.7M. Morant leads the books at $42.2M, followed by Holiday at $34.8M, Sharpe at $20.1M and Camara at $18.1M. The Blazers own their 2027 first and 2028 second, hold swap rights on picks in 2027, 2028, 2029 and 2030, and owe their 2029 second to Memphis. The summer's other move: Hyunjung Lee is expected to join on an Exhibit 10 deal.
Identity and rivalries
Portland's identity is inseparable from its fans. The nickname Rip City, coined by broadcaster Bill Schonely in the franchise's first season, still frames how the fanbase talks about this team, and Blazermania is the word for a relationship that has outlasted the losing stretches along with the good ones. The Trail Blazers were also among the first teams in the league to test OneCourt Haptic Displays, a device that lets fans who are blind or have low vision feel live games through vibration. On the court, the rival that still matters most is the Thunder, Portland's neighbor in the Northwest Division, with years of division-title races between the two clubs. At a pace of 101.63 last season, the Blazers played a deliberate tempo, the identity of a roster built to win with its defense.
Home, owners and numbers
The Blazers play at the Moda Center in Portland's Rose Quarter, an arena that opened in 1995 as the Rose Garden and seats 19,980 for basketball, 20,580 with standing room. Before that, the team played at the Memorial Coliseum, built in 1960 and holding 12,888. Carolina Hurricanes owner Thomas Dundon bought the Blazers on August 23, 2025 for roughly $4.2 billion from Paul Allen's estate; the NBA Board of Governors approved the sale for $4.25 billion on March 30, 2026. The NBA retired Bill Russell's No. 6 across the league, Portland included, on August 11, 2022, and Jack Ramsay's number honors the 1977 championship he coached. Clyde Drexler, Scottie Pippen and Lenny Wilkens are among the Trail Blazers in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
What they are chasing
Portland is chasing a second championship since its only title, won in 1977. The financial question is how long the roster the front office built this summer stays affordable: the payroll already sits above the salary cap, and every dollar spent on Morant and Holiday pushes the Blazers closer to the tax and the aprons that limit what a team can do to fix itself in-season. The other argument fans have: the Blazers have traded away swap rights on most of their first-round picks into the next decade and still owe Memphis a second-rounder, so the price of building around Morant, Avdija and Clingan now is control over the roster's future. Whether Micah Nori's group is good enough to make that trade worth it is still an open question.
The Trail Blazers entered the NBA in 1970 as an expansion team alongside the Cleveland Cavaliers and Buffalo Braves. Founder Harry Glickman raised the $3.7 million franchise fee with investors Robert Schmertz, Larry Weinberg and Herman Sarkowsky, and the name Trail Blazers beat out 10,000 entries, including the more popular 'Pioneers,' which was already taken. The team played its first years at Memorial Coliseum under coach Rolland Todd with Geoff Petrie and Sidney Wicks, missing the playoffs in each of its first six seasons.
Everything changed with the 1974 draft of Bill Walton. The 1976 dispersal draft brought Maurice Lucas and Jack Ramsay was hired as coach; together they delivered the franchise's only championship in 1977, a season that opened the longest sellout streak in American major professional sports, 814 straight games from April 5, 1977 until 1995. Walton was NBA Finals MVP in 1977 and regular-season MVP in 1978, but a foot injury and a contract dispute ended his Portland career after a 50-10 start collapsed to 58-24 and a conference semifinal loss to the Seattle SuperSonics.
The 1983 pick of Clyde Drexler at No. 14 defined the next era. A year later Portland took Sam Bowie at No. 2, passing on Michael Jordan, who went third to Chicago. Terry Porter, drafted last in the first round in 1985, became the franchise's career assists leader. Paul Allen bought the team in 1988 for $70 million, becoming the youngest owner in the Big Four leagues at 35. Under coach Rick Adelman, with Buck Williams and Jerome Kersey, Drexler led Portland to the NBA Finals in 1990 and 1992, losing to the Detroit Pistons and the Chicago Bulls, plus a 63-19 season in between. Drexler was later traded to the Houston Rockets after Bob Whitsitt took over as team president in 1994.
In 1995 the team left Memorial Coliseum for the 20,000-seat Rose Garden, and the sellout streak ended. Whitsitt rebuilt around talented but troubled players, including Isaiah Rider and Rasheed Wallace, and later added Scottie Pippen. Under coach Mike Dunleavy, Portland reached the 1999 Western Conference finals, swept by the San Antonio Spurs, and the 2000 conference finals, where a 15-point fourth-quarter lead over the Los Angeles Lakers slipped away in a Game 7 loss.
Six Hall of Famers have worn a Trail Blazers uniform: Lenny Wilkens, Bill Walton, Clyde Drexler, Dražen Petrović, Arvydas Sabonis and Scottie Pippen, and three Hall of Fame coaches, Wilkens, Jack Ramsay and Rick Adelman, ran the bench. Geoff Petrie, Sidney Wicks, Brandon Roy and Damian Lillard won Rookie of the Year; Kevin Duckworth, Zach Randolph and CJ McCollum won Most Improved Player. Since the SuperSonics left for Oklahoma City in 2008, Portland remains the only NBA team in the Pacific Northwest.