As we close the loop on the calendar year of 2025, it's worth saying: I don't think the Trail Blazers franchise has ever had a single year this eventful.
All of the following happened in the last 12 months:
An unexpected 23-18 finish to the season flipped what was looking to be another tank year into a surprise play-in push that fell short. General manager Joe Cronin and head coach Chauncey Billups got extensions in April, when most people (including me) thought it was a foregone conclusion Billups would be gone at the end of his contract.
A month after the season ended, the Paul Allen estate announced that the Blazers were—finally—up for sale, seven years after Allen's death in 2018.
The front office stunned the NBA by drafting Yang Hansen in the first round, which was one of the biggest stories of the offseason both because the pick was so off the radar and because it made the Blazers into the unofficial team of China, the country with the biggest NBA fanbase in the world. Yang's performance at Summer League in Las Vegas only added to the hype.
Damian Lillard was surprisingly waived-and-stretched by the Milwaukee Bucks in the wake of the torn Achilles he suffered in the playoffs, and signed a three-year, $42 million deal to return to the Blazers, two years after the summer of his trade request.
Three months after the Allen estate announced they were selling the Blazers, they reached an agreement with Carolina Hurricanes owner Tom Dundon to buy the team for $4.25 billion. The sale is expected to be made official in the coming months.
One day after the first game of this season, Billups was arrested by the FBI in connection with a wide-ranging gambling probe that was one of the biggest scandals in the sports world this year.
To recap, that's an out-of-nowhere late-season turnaround, a team sale, one of the most out-of-left-field draft picks in the NBA this century, the return of the franchise's all-time most beloved player and the arrest of the newly extended head coach on gambling charges, all in one calendar year.
I'd say there's no way 2026 will be quite that chaotic, but that would be a foolish thing to predict.
For now, here are five questions about things we know are on the horizon for the new year.
Will the Blazers make the playoffs?
This time a year ago, Portland was 11-21 and the postseason wasn't a thought in anyone's mind. Cooper Flagg was still the goal.
At 14-20, they're only a few games better in the standings than they were as 2024 turned to 2025, but the outlook on the season is far different. Last year's turnaround, and subsequent push for the play-in, came later in the calendar. They enter 2026 in 10th place in the Western Conference.
Even if they go on another second-half run like last year (which would require some guys getting healthy, and who knows when that will happen), I don't think it's realistic at this point for the Blazers to get a top-six seed and avoid the play-in entirely. They've dropped too many winnable games already. They'll spend the rest of the year jostling with Golden State, Memphis, Phoenix and Dallas for positioning in the 7-10 spots.
The question then becomes, do they make it out of the play-in? Do we get the first playoff basketball in Portland since Terry Stotts was the head coach?
The Blazers have lost a lot of games they shouldn't have lost this season and been in games they had no business being in. I don't think it's crazy to suggest they could be one of the teams that makes it out of the play-in if they get the right matchups and the right health breaks. But it's far from a guarantee. They have to start winning some of these games in front of them.
How quickly will Tom Dundon make his presence felt?
When the Allen estate announced the sale agreement with Dundon's group in September, they said the deal would close before the end of the 2025-26 season. My educated guess is that sometime around late March, when the NBA holds its annual spring Board of Governors meetings, is when that will happen. The sale agreement has to pass by a three-fourths majority vote (23 out of 30 teams) to become official, but these things don't get to that point if they aren't going to be approved.
Assuming Dundon is officially running the show by the time the season ends in April, what will his first offseason look like? Will he move quickly to bring in his own front-office and coaching staff, or will he let Cronin and his group continue building? Will he push for sweeping changes to the roster like Mat Ishbia did, trading for Kevin Durant within hours of officially taking over as owner of the Suns, or will he slow-roll the roster build and let things continue to develop organically?
I don't know Dundon at all, but I'm looking forward to meeting him. I've heard he's a lot more accessible to media and the public than current Blazers ownership is. How he actually feels about things isn't going to be a mystery the way it is with Jody Allen.
How quickly, and how drastically, Dundon shakes things up will probably depend on how the rest of the season goes. There's no reason to automatically assume that just because he's new, he's immediately going to clean house. He may want to use his first season owning the team as an evaluation period for the roster, coaching staff and front office. The last few times an NBA team has been sold, those top-level changes haven't come until a year or more later if they do at all. But we won't know either way until he's actually in charge.
Beyond what happens with the roster and staff when Dundon takes over as owner, his biggest task in the coming years will be figuring out where the Blazers play.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver said in July that Portland likely needs a new arena; Blazers president of business operations Dewayne Hankins pushed back against that notion at media day, saying he believes a major renovation to the Moda Center would be good enough.
Where it lands will be for Dundon and the city and state governments to figure out. The team is locked into a lease through 2030 at Moda Center, which is once again owned by the city after the bridge lease extension they signed in 2024. The team currently has plans to do a massive, multi-year renovation to the arena, but Dundon may have other ideas. There will be negotiating for public money to go towards either a new arena or an overhaul of the existing one.
Some people locally are worried about the Blazers leaving Portland. I am not one of those people. But the question of the team's long-term home is far from settled. Once they're under new ownership, we might start to get some answers.
When will the organization make a decision on Chauncey Billups?
If you go to the coaching staff page on the Blazers' official website, Chauncey Billups is still listed as the head coach. It's hard to see him ever coaching another game in Portland (a reality he appears to have accepted, considering he recently sold his house in Lake Oswego), but as of this writing, the Blazers haven't made any official determination on his future.
When will they?
Nobody knows the answer to that question. The Blazers have not commented on the situation since a statement the day he was arrested that they were aware of the allegations and cooperating with authorities; they've been referring all questions to the NBA league office, which placed Billups on unpaid administrative leave the day the indictments came down.
The judge in the case case told prosecutors in November that he wants the trial to start this coming September. Billups has pled not guilty to the charges of wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy, and his lawyer said the day of his arrest that they plan to fight the charges and clear his name. Once the trial starts, it could take weeks or months to resolve. The government claims to have over a terabyte of documents to present as evidence for discovery.
So the Blazers can't just wait for a verdict in Billups' case before making a decision, because that may not come for upwards of a year. But there likely are also legalities preventing them from simply cutting ties now. This stuff is all above my pay grade.
But it is another big question Dundon will have to answer when he takes over as the Blazers' owner this year.
What will Damian Lillard look like when he returns?
Lillard has mostly been off the radar since he returned to the Blazers in July, but he's been around. He sits on the bench during games, is an active participant in huddles and team activities and travels on most road trips.
At some point in 2026, he's going to play basketball for the Portland Trail Blazers again, too. Not this season—Lillard and the organization have already said that publicly—but assuming his Achilles rehab continues to go as planned, he should be ready to go when the 2026-27 season starts in October.
The Blazers' all-time leading scorer returning to Portland to play out the final years of his career is a great story, but how good Damian Lillard the basketball player be in 2026, at 36 years old coming off a torn Achilles and missing an entire season?
By all indications, his recovery is going well. He's confident he'll be back to his All-Star self when he comes out the other side, and so are others in the organization. But that's how he's wired to think, just like he was wired to think until the very end that he had enough to win with in Portland. The reality is that there isn't a great track record of players Lillard's age and size coming back from this injury and being as effective as they were before.
We'll find out this fall if he can be the exception.
BONUS QUESTION: How successful will the Portland Fire's inaugural WNBA season be?
Amid all the questions this year about the Blazers' future, what about the other professional basketball team that will start playing at Moda Center in 2026?
The WNBA and players' union are still locked in a labor battle that doesn't seem like it's close to being over. But assuming there's a season, the Portland Fire are set to start up in May.
For as messy as the Fire's rollout has been at times off the court (they already missed on their first choice of a team president), I've been encouraged by the basketball hires they've made.
General manager Vanja Černivec just helped build the Golden State Valkyries, one of the most successful expansion teams ever in any sport, men's or women's. Her top assistant, Ashley Battle, played in the league and has held a variety of scouting roles with the Celtics. Head coach Alex Sarama is an unconventional hire without any WNBA experience, but his player-development philosophy is intriguing and I think highly enough of Černivec that I'm willing to trust her judgment if she thinks he's the best person for the job. Brittni Donaldson, who is joining as both an assistant coach and assistant general manager, has gotten rave reviews from people I've talked to who worked with her at her various stops in the NBA. Their most recent assistant coaching hire, Sylvia Fowles, is a Hall of Famer, all-time great player and universally loved figure in women's basketball.
It's tough to say too much about how good the Fire will be in year one, because there's no date or rules yet for an expansion draft or free agency. None of that will be possible until there's a new CBA.
The Valkyries team that Černivec helped put together set the bar extremely high for the next wave of WNBA expansion teams. How quickly can she do it again?
