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📍PORTLAND, Ore. – Until the final two minutes, Sunday was a net positive for the Trail Blazers despite the 123-114 loss to the New York Knicks.
Against an Eastern Conference contender on a losing skid that came into Portland needing a get-right game, the Blazers acquitted themselves just as well as they have against the other good teams they've played in this recent hot streak. A 14-3 Knicks run over the final five minutes helped them pull away and snapped Portland's five-game winning streak, but for most of the afternoon, it was a back-and-forth affair and the Blazers defended and moved the ball well.
More than that, they got Jrue Holiday back, 27 games and almost two months after he went out with a right calf strain. Holiday looked a little rusty, shooting just 2-of-7 from the field playing just 16 minutes off the bench on a minutes restriction, but he made two three-pointers and had four assists. Most importantly, he said afterwards that his calf felt fine.
Losing one game to a good team but getting their point guard back is a trade the Blazers will make every time.
And then, with one minute and 52 seconds remaining, Deni Avdija grabbed the rebound on a missed three-pointer by Mikal Bridges, grabbed at his lower back and immediately signaled to the bench to come out of the game.
In the moment, it was a great concern because Avdija plays through everything. He added another 38 minutes onto his league-leading total for the season on Sunday. He drives hard and takes a lot of contact. Despite that workload, he's one of only four Blazers players who have been available for all 40 games this season.
He's also been, without a doubt, the biggest reason why the Blazers have been able to stay afloat despite all their injuries, putting up All-Star numbers and commanding double-teams nightly.
This team has survived a lot of injuries to key players this season, but an extended injury to Avdija might be too much to ask them to overcome.
"I'm not really concerned," Avdija said in the locker room after an extended treatment session with the team's medical staff. "I'm a tough guy. I'm going to be alright."
Avdija said this while grimacing through every word, with an ice wrap on his entire lower back. He struggled to sit down at his locker to take his socks off, even as he was calling the injury "nothing major."
"On the rebound, I just felt my back give up on me and I couldn't straighten up," he said.
Avdija's apparent back injury came on the same day the Blazers announced Kris Murray will be out indefinitely with a back injury of his own. This team can't get one player back without losing another one.
We'll find out in the coming days how serious Avdija's injury is. After the four games the Blazers play this coming week, including a back-to-back next weekend, they have three days off. Maybe that week is enough to get him right as they prepare to go on their first extended road trip of 2026 at the end of the month.
If it's up to Avdija, he won't even be out that long.
"I'm telling you, as soon as I'm walking on two feet, I'll be able to play," he said.
Concern over Avdija's injury overshadowed the return of Holiday, whose right calf strain was initially supposed to keep him out one or two weeks but dragged on for almost two months, much to his frustration.
"I don't have too many years left, so I'd love to play as many games and minutes as I can," Holiday said. "This team, they're fun to watch, but I'd rather have fun playing with them."
As Holiday explained, he would go through practices and two-on-two or three-on-three scrimmages and feel the calf flare up. Given the epidemic of calf and Achilles injuries around the NBA, and the fact that Holiday is in his mid-30s, the Blazers' medical staff didn't feel comfortable clearing him to play.
It didn't help, either, that the Blazers have barely had any time to practice this season, and when they have, they weren't doing much full-contact scrimmaging because too many of their players were beat up from playing too many minutes.
It wasn't conducive to getting Holiday back into game shape quickly. As he joked, "We have guys on the team that play faster than our [player development] coaches do."
The Blazers need him back, especially if Avdija misses time with this back injury. But Holiday has been impressed with how they've steadied the ship while he's been out.
"It makes a difference when you have a group of guys that care about each other," he said. "We all love to see Sidy [Cissoko] and [Caleb] Love play the way they've been playing. I love to see [Donovan Clingan] play the way he's been playing. Obviously, Deni should be an All-Star this year. It's just big jumps for everybody and it's been happening at the right time.
"These guys are playing well and playing big minutes and winning big games. You see these young guys playing well and playing very hard. Not only for me, but this city is seeing how fun it is to watch us play."
