Our possession-by-possession breakdown of Deni Avdija's Game 5 performance against the San Antonio Spurs yielded findings that were, for the most part, unsurprising. Portland's All-Star prefers to attack downhill - usually going right -  and does his best work coming off pick-and-roll actions and handoffs. Perimeter shooting, as is well known, remains the weaker part of his game.

The trade that brought Ja Morant to Portland raises a question that has quietly followed the deal since it was announced: how well do these two fits? Avdija needs space to operate. But Morant is a below-average three-point shooter - he hasn't shot above 30.9% from deep in five seasons - and like Avdija, he needs the ball in his hands to generate offense. Two players who both require space, and neither one can provide it for the other. Add Damian Lillard into the equation as the projected second guard in the backcourt, and the offensive decisions facing new head coach Micah Nori start to look genuinely complicated before training camp has even opened.

The complications don't stop on the offensive end. Both Morant and Lillard are limited defensively, particularly after the injuries each has dealt with in recent seasons, and together they project as an undersized, unphysical backcourt at the point of attack defense. Last season, Portland's defensive identity was built around different building blocks: Toumani Camara as an excellent on-ball defender, Jrue Holiday applying pressure in the backcourt, and Donovan Clingan's shot-blocking presence anchoring the paint. The Blazers also had the luxury of deploying relatively big lineups, with Jeremy Grant and Shaedon Sharpe in the rotation, which allowed them to switch almost everything on the perimeter without giving up size.

This season, the picture is far less clear. Holiday's role in the rotation remains an open question, as does the place of Scoot Henderson and Sharpe in Nori's (and the front office's) plans. Whatever the answers turn out to be, the starting backcourt is already shaping up as a potential liability in point-of-attack defense - and that's a problem no rotation tweak fully solves.

This brings us to Avdija's defense. The numbers tell a more complicated story than his reputation suggests. Avdija arrived in Portland carrying the label of a good defender: opponents scored just 0.96 points per possession against him in Washington, placing him in the 66th percentile leaguewide - an excellent mark by Synergy's standards. Over his two seasons in Portland, that number has trended downward. He allowed 1.026 PPP in 2024/25, a below-average figure, and slipped further to 1.046 in 2025/26 — the 25th percentile in the league.

The decline is at least partially understandable in context. As his offensive load has grown — from 20.9% usage two seasons ago to 30.9% this season, per Cleaning the Glass, the defensive energy required to match that output inevitably takes a toll. That's not an excuse; it's a tradeoff that any team building around Avdija as a primary offensive option will need to account for.

Tracking Avdija's defense in Game 5 against San Antonio reveals something more nuanced than a simple decline in defensive output: Avdija wasn't particularly involved in Portland's defensive schemes to begin with. His counting stats were nearly negligible — 3 rebounds and a charge drawn. He logged 15 possessions tagged as negative events: his matchup scoring on him, fouls, getting beaten off the dribble, coverage breakdowns. But the most telling number is this: Avdija was involved in just 17 defensive possessions across the entire game, compared to 43 on the offensive end.

The explanation is straightforward. For most of the game, Tiago Splitter made a deliberate effort to hide Avdija on San Antonio's less threatening offensive players - primarily Devin Vassell and Harrison Barnes, both of whom spend most of their time in corner-heavy, spot-up roles, waiting for a kick-out three rather than creating off the dribble. It's reasonable to assume that the decision was driven, at least in part, by a desire to preserve Avdija's offensive energy, keeping him fresh enough to generate on the other end rather than burn him out guarding the Spurs' primary creators.

Which brings us back to the additions of Morant and the return of Lillard. In the starting lineup at least, Coach Nori will need other answers at the point of attack on defense  (a responsibility that will likely fall heavily on Camara), but the defensive burden on Avdija himself is also expected to grow. He won't have the luxury of being hidden on corner-standing spot-up players every night, not with a backcourt that already projects as a liability in that department.

That raises two questions worth watching closely as next season unfolds. First, whether Avdija can stabilize or reverse a defensive slide that has now continued for two straight years. And second, perhaps more importantly, what a heavier defensive workload does to the offensive production he spent this past season building. 

The two sides of his game have historically pulled in opposite directions as his usage has climbed. Whether he can carry both at once, at this level, is the central unresolved question surrounding Portland's most important player.

We'll start getting answers in October.