Portland Trail Blazers fans are well acquainted with their team's performance in the 2014-15 season. We've talked about the heady 30-8 start, the semi-disappointing 51 win total, the much more disappointing first-round exit to the playoffs. We've chronicled the dominance of LaMarcus Aldridge, the ups and downs of Damian Lillard, and Nicolas Batum's slump. Amid all of this, a strange and wondrous sea change has gone all but unnoticed. Let's take a moment to reflect on it today.
If you set the DeLorean back to spring of 2014 and asked Blazers fans to name the guys they relied on most, the embodiment of Portland's hope, most would reference the three players I just mentioned: Aldridge, Lillard, Batum.