The Portland Trail Blazers are watching the 2025 NBA Playoffs from home after they finished the 2024-25 regular season with a 36-46 record, but the team carved out quite a productive second half of the regular season.
After Portland won just 13 of its first 41 contests, it went 23-18 the rest of the way. Young players such as guard Scoot Henderson, guard Shaedon Sharpe and forward Toumani Camara carved out promising seasons as well. Camara is the oldest of the three at just 24 years old.
Despite Portland’s impressive finish to the season, Marc Stein and Jake Fischer have reported that the Trail Blazers will be a team to monitor for potential trades in the offseason because of the number of players they have who will be on expiring contracts next season.
“Rival teams project Portland as a key team to monitor for potential moves this offseason with four established players on expiring contracts in 2025-26: Anfernee Simons, Matisse Thybulle and big men Robert Williams III and Deandre Ayton,” Stein and Fischer wrote.
Simons might have had the best 2024-25 campaign out of the four players mentioned by Fischer and Stein. He played in 70 games and averaged 19.3 points, 2.7 rebounds and 4.8 assists per game in his seventh NBA season. Simons led the Blazers in points and made 3s per contest. Additionally, he averaged the second-most assists per game on the team behind Henderson.
As for Ayton, he has yet to live up to the expectations that come with being a No. 1 overall pick and was limited to just 40 games, but he was a nightly double-double threat for Portland when healthy. He averaged a team-high 10.2 rebounds to go along with 14.4 points per game.
Ayton has dealt with his fair share of injury concerns (he suffered a calf injury in February of the 2024-25 season), but there are arguably bigger injury-related question marks surrounding both Williams and Thybulle. It’s been a major struggle for Williams to stay on the floor ever since he got traded away from the Boston Celtics, as he logged six appearances in his maiden season with the Trail Blazers and only 20 this season.
Finally, Thybulle was limited to just 15 games played with Portland this season due to knee and ankle injuries.
All four of Simons, Ayton, Williams and Thybulle either have been or are highly productive NBA players, but folks should ultimately expect them to receive varying levels of interest on the trade market.
