The Portland Trail Blazers are no stranger to a slow start to a season. Similar to this season, they opened 2015-16 with a 15-24 record, 2016-17 with an 18-27 record, and 2019-20 with a 16-24 start, only to rally and sneak into the postseason in each of those seasons. Bleacher Report’s Greg Swartz suggests that this will be the year that those hot starts run out, predicting that the Blazers will deal away both Robert Covington and Jusuf Nurkic at the 2022 NBA trade deadline.
Swartz’s rationale is that Covington and Nurkic — both unrestricted free agents this offseason — won’t be able to both remain in Portland long-term, so a deal would merely be speeding up an inevitable process.