Trail Blazers 'Still Thinking Big-Picture' Despite Win-Now Moves
The Blazers aren't rebuilding anymore, but they don't view the 2025-26 season as "playoffs or bust."
📍PORTLAND, Ore. — Media day is about setting expectations.
The opening of training camp is usually a good barometer, not for how a team's season is going to go, but for how they think it's going to go.
For months, the Trail Blazers have been telegraphing that they don't consider themselves a rebuilding team anymore. After going 23-18 in the second half of the season, general manager Joe Cronin and head coach Chauncey Billups both signed contract extensions.
Trading Anfernee Simons for Jrue Holiday, who is almost 10 years older and was coming from two contending situations in Boston and Milwaukee, is a move you make when you aren't focused on lottery odds.
The clearest indication of that came the last time Cronin talked to reporters, at the July 22 press conference announcing the return of Damian Lillard.
"It's winning time now for the Trail Blazers," he said then.
Two months later, on the eve of training camp, Cronin seemed to walk that back a little.
