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📍LOS ANGELES — Sometimes, planning ahead can burn you.
As I normally do, I booked all of my travel for the 2026-27 Trail Blazers season in August, when the schedule was released. Among the road swings I prioritized was the first one of the season, which started on Friday with a win in Sacramento and ends Tuesday with a game against the Lakers that will be televised nationally on NBC.
At least, I thought it was one road trip. With three days off between games, I figured the team would get some downtime in Los Angeles and practice at one of the local colleges, as teams usually do on the road. L.A. in particular is a city players like spending extra time in. Many NBA players (including Jrue Holiday) live here in the offseason, and many of their agents have their offices out here. Along with New York and Las Vegas, it's one of the central hubs of the basketball world.
It turns out, the Blazers won't be accompanying me to Los Angeles during this downtime. They flew back to Portland from Sacramento after Friday night's game, and will fly to L.A. on Monday to play the Lakers. When I found this out about a week ago, I tried to change my trip, only to find that it would have cost significantly more money to fly back from Sacramento and then turn around and go to LAX a few days later, even subtracting the two extra hotel nights in Los Angeles. (In no universe should a 90-minute one-way flight from Sacramento to Portland cost $414, even last-minute, but this is the world we live in.) So I'm getting an unplanned three-day vacation in L.A.
There are definitely worse places to be stuck for a few days, and since I don't have practices to go to, there's time for what the kids call "side quests." I saw Jay-Z last night at SoFi Stadium (he was great) and plan to see a showing of You Can See Everything later today, along with finishing up some stories I have coming out soon and working on some back-end improvements to the site and other parts of my business operation.
Now that the season is fully up and running, I'm going to resurrect this Sunday notes column that I wrote for about a month during last season and then back-burnered when I got too busy covering the sale of the team last March and everything that came with that.
The main reason I want to do this column every week is to have a place to put notes and observations that aren’t big enough to write as standalone stories. A lot of this stuff once upon a time would have just been tweets, but as you know, I’m no longer on “X, The Everything App.” Think of these columns as collections of things I would have posted on there if that platform wasn’t what it’s become.
Best of all, these columns will not be paywalled, and will be free for anyone to read. I want there to be something every week that’s accessible to everyone, and a lot of the more in-depth reporting and columns I write are behind the paywall because, well, this is how I make my living. I also look at this as a way to advertise what you’ll be getting if you do decide to upgrade.
Now is as good a time as any to get on board. We’re past the hype and fanfare around Damian Lillard’s first game as a Blazer in three years, and now the games are coming fast. I have a heavy travel schedule between now and Thanksgiving (I’ll be at all but one road game during this early stretch of the season), which I’m able to do because of my paid subscribers. I’m going to be on the road more this season than anyone else covering the Blazers, which means I can provide a unique lens to the team.
In the year-plus since Damian Lillard officially rejoined the Blazers as a free agent, I've gone back and forth on what my expectations were going to be when he made his return.
Being realistic, most players are never the same after they tear their Achilles. It effectively ended Kobe Bryant's career, and even Jayson Tatum, who's nine years younger than Lillard, has struggled since he returned. Kevin Durant is the only superstar who's been pretty much the same since returning, and he was a half-decade younger than Lillard is now.
On the other hand, it's hard not to get taken in by the workout videos the team posted over the summer and the way Lillard talked for a year about the patient approach he took to his recovery. He already showed the world the shot hasn't gone anywhere when he paused his rehab to win the three-point competition at All-Star Weekend in Los Angeles earlier this year.
My personal expectations going into the year were somewhere in the middle, but from teammates, coaches and front-office staff who had seen him over the summer, there was widespread optimism that he'd be back to something close to his pre-injury form.
Turns out, nobody was optimistic enough.
In the opener against Phoenix, Lillard looked just about the same as he did the last time he wore a Blazers uniform in 2022-23, which was also the last time he made an All-NBA team. He moved well, he's still one of the best shooters on the planet, and it doesn't really matter that at his age he's a defensive liability, because he was one when he was 25, too.
This is where the decision to add Ja Morant to a crowded backcourt with Lillard, Jrue Holiday, Scoot Henderson, Deni Avdija and (when he gets healthy) Shaedon Sharpe actually makes sense. There's no way Lillard, at his age and coming off that injury, would be able to hold up for a full season with the kind of minutes and offensive responsibility he's had for most of his career. With the way the roster is set up, he doesn't have to. He can play off the ball to give Morant and Avdija open lanes, and the guard depth allows Nori to keep his minutes in the high 20s instead of the mid-to-high 30s he's played for most of his career.
"I'm 36, and we've had conversations about it," Lillard said days before the season opener. "I'm not gonna be playing 38 minutes per night. I'm sure it'll be games where I play more extended minutes and some higher minutes, but with the depth that we have specifically at the guard position, I don't think I'll be having to play super high minutes. But I will say, I'm a live body. I've taken care of myself for years and years and years, on and off the floor, and I don't want it to be misunderstood. I'm not an old man, you know."
Last season, Tiago Splitter introduced “The Box” as an award to give to the best defensive player in every Blazers win. Micah Nori, in his first season as a head coach, has his own motivational tool that’s similar but not the same: boxing gloves. After each win, the gloves will go to the player who landed the “knockout punch,” the play that decided the game. The player with the most at the end of the season will win a pair of gloves signed by Floyd Mayweather courtesy of the Blazers’ head athletic trainer, Courtney Watson, who has worked with him for years. (Lillard, a well-known boxing superfan, is probably more excited about this than anybody else, and it's a good bet he'll win more than a few of the postgame gloves.)
Nori has said throughout camp that he wants to play a 10-man rotation. Through the first two games, it would appear the 10th spot for now belongs to Vít Krejčí. It makes sense theoretically, since they traded for Krejčí at last year's deadline to add shooting but for whatever reason, he hasn't found his shot since coming over from Atlanta. He shot 30 percent from three last year and has missed all three of his attempts through two games. At some point, the shot needs to come around, or else it's tough to see what he helps with.
Sidy Cissoko scored 15 points in the win over the Kings and is making threes more consistently, albeit on low volume. If he can become any kind of offensive threat in addition to a defense-and-energy bench guy, that changes a lot for this team.
Cissoko told me after the win in Sacramento that he feels more comfortable on the offensive end of the floor than he ever has: "The lanes have never been that open for me to put pressure on the rim. It's great to be around. It's like playing 'My Career' mode on 2K."
Jeremy Sochan, whom the Blazers waived before the start of the season, was the No. 1 overall pick in Saturday's G League draft by the Mavericks' affiliate, the Texas Legends. The Rip City Remix only made one pick in the two-round draft, taking former West Virginia forward Quinn Slazinski. The Remix's season begins on Nov. 10, and their home opener at Chiles Center is on Nov. 20 against the Santa Cruz Warriors.
Not everyone hates Tom Dundon. Before the season opener, I happened to be at the tunnel as these kids stopped the Blazers’ owner to ask for selfies and autographs. I asked him how often that happens, and he responded “Never.”
Sarah Ashlee Barker, who’s stayed in Portland this offseason to rehab her torn ACL, was at the Blazers’ season opener and got big cheers when she was shown on the screen.
Carla Leite is playing in EuroCup for the Turkish club Cimsa ÇBK Mersin. She scored 18 points and had 11 assists and three steals in a win this week over Sleza Wrocław.
Nyadiew Puoch is back home in Australia playing for the NBL’s UC Capitals. She had 13 points, six rebounds and three steals in their season-opening win over Bendigo.
Frieda Bühner scored 17 points and had five rebounds and four assists for USK Praha in EuroLeague.
Megan DiLeo has been documenting the process of starting her own book-distribution business on Instagram. She’s spent the offseason in Turkey where her husband, David, is playing.
Sean Highkin
Sean Highkin
Sean Highkin
