Portland Trail Blazers: 2018-19 NBA season preview

The Portland Trail Blazers had a 2017-18 regular season to be proud of, but fell flat in the playoffs. Here is the 2018-19 preview for a team looking for redemption.

Your assessment of the Portland Trail Blazers‘ 2017-18 campaign will likely depend on if you see the glass as half-full or half-empty. On one side, the Blazers’ 49-win regular season was their best in three years. It came complete with a 13-game winning streak, a division title and their best finish in the Western Conference since 2000.

On the other hand, the Blazers squandered those accomplishments in the first round of the NBA playoffs. They were swept by the New Orleans Pelicans 4-0, despite holding home-court advantage in the series. The loss left the organization with a lot of questions to answer in the summer. Quite a few of them came from outside observers that were skeptical of Portland’s legitimacy as the third-best team in the conference.

For much of the summer, Damian Lillard had to fight rumors that he was on the trading block. Meanwhle, CJ McCollum caught heat for voicing his displeasure — on multiple occasions — about the Golden State Warriors‘ recent acquisitions of Kevin Durant and DeMarcus Cousins, and how they affect the league’s competitive balance.

By the end of the summer, with few Blazers-related headlines geared towards the transactions they made, prognosticators were left to believe they did little to improve the team. Ultimately, most feel they will miss this season’s playoffs.

So we face another preseason where the national expectations are low for Rip City. For the Blazers, that simply means they’re only eight days away from re-starting their mission to prove doubters wrong. Here’s a look at what could be in store for the 2018-19 Portland Trail Blazers.