The Portland Trail Blazers were one of just four NBA teams who stood pat at last week’s NBA trade deadline. While Conor Bergin and I had some thoughts about it on last week’s podcast - including my rating the Blazers’ trade deadline as an ‘F’ - The Ringer’s Michael Pina has even sharper critique for the Blazers’ lack of activity. Let’s do a bit of call and response between Pina and my own observations:
Portland is 23-31, a spunky 13-seed that’s only 4.5 games back of the play-in. It’s also spinning its wheels, trudging through an increasingly paradoxical rebuild that can now, fairly, be categorized as bizarre.