Portland Trail Blazers: 3 players facing the most pressure in 2018-19

3. Meyers Leonard

The 2018-19 season will be Meyers Leonard’s seventh in the NBA, all with the Blazers. The No. 9 overall pick in the 2012 NBA Draft has spent much of that time in the league trying to fight his way into the rotation.

With last season’s emergence of Zach Collins and a breakout year from Ed Davis, Leonard was relegated to the end of the bench for much of 2017-18. He only played 254 minutes in 33 appearances, averaging 3.4 points and 2.1 rebounds per game.

However, he played his most efficient basketball within that small sample size, managing to shoot a career-high 59.0 percent from the field and 42.3 percent from 3-point range.

With Ed Davis leaving Portland in free agency, the door has re-opened for Leonard to prove he can produce at the NBA level. He is under contract through 2019-20, so his chances to show he can be useful to the Blazers, or to the NBA in general, are running out.

Besides his unwieldy contract, Leonard is still on Portland’s roster because he possesses the talent to be a floor-stretching big. The front office presumably still believes he can do that consistently. The pressure is on Meyers Leonard to finally prove them right.