{"id":853992,"date":"2026-08-13T16:58:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T16:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/853992\/"},"modified":"2026-08-13T16:58:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T16:58:09","slug":"who-will-the-blazers-be-better-than-this-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/853992\/","title":{"rendered":"Who Will the Blazers Be Better Than This Season?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">The Portland Trail Blazers will approach the 2026-27 NBA season with a fair amount of optimism. They returned to the NBA Playoffs last spring for the first time in five years. They added extra roster members over the summer, including former Memphis Grizzlies superstar Ja Morant. They\u2019ll be ready to compete in the Western Conference come October.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">The big question is, at what level?<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">Every team aspires to an NBA Championship. The usual way of looking at a team\u2019s prospects is asking how high they can climb, how well they compete with elite teams. The Blazers might not quite be there yet. The Oklahoma City Thunder and San Antonio Luck Bombs\u2026errr\u2026Spurs have the top two positions wrapped up as far as most experts can tell. Forecasting the Blazers challenging their supremacy would be near-delusional.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">There\u2019s another way to look at this, though. Ranking in the conference isn\u2019t just based on how many teams are above you. It\u2019s about how many teams you can put beneath. That\u2019s the question we\u2019re going to ask today.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">Below is a list of Western Conference NBA teams in order of standing last season with records attached. Here\u2019s what we want to know.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">The list of teams in the West:<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">Which teams are beneath Portland still and which will be at the Blazers\u2019 level this year? Share your thoughts and reasoning in the comments section below!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Portland Trail Blazers will approach the 2026-27 NBA season with a fair amount of optimism. They returned&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":853993,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,189749,85],"class_list":["post-853992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nba","tag-portland-trail-blazers-discussion","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=853992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853992\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/853993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=853992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=853992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=853992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}