Portland Trail Blazers Close Summer League on a Split While Ja Morant Era Looms and Budget Cuts Bite

The Portland Trail Blazers wrapped up their Las Vegas Summer League run this week the same way they have spent the entire offseason: handing fans a reason to believe and a reason to wince, usually within the same news cycle. On the floor, the summer squad split its final two games, rolling past Denver 108-101 on Thursday before dropping a grinder to Utah, 83-79, in Friday's finale to finish 2-3. Second-year center Yang Hansen left Vegas as the most interesting player on the trip, all touch and vision and turnovers. Off the floor, the week belonged to owner Tom Dundon's calculator. Matisse Thybulle walked to the Lakers for the price of a mid-level sedan, and reports detailed sweeping cuts to the team's broadcast operation that left longtime voices out of work and Portland's fan base fuming. A franchise that swung a blockbuster for Ja Morant three weeks ago spent this week trimming producers. That contrast is the story of the summer in Portland.

The Week That Was for the Portland Trail Blazers

Thursday night against the Nuggets was the summer roster's best performance in Vegas. Seven Blazers scored in double figures, the team piled up 30 assists against Denver's 15, shot 54 percent from the field and 44 percent from three, and won the paint 50-26. Quincy Olivari, Frankie Fidler and Flynn Cameron, all summer invitees, led the way with 16 points apiece, Jaylen Martin added 15 off the bench, and Hansen chipped in 13 points and 5 rebounds. The game itself was tight, with eight ties and 13 lead changes and neither side leading by more than 10, but Portland pulled away by outscoring Denver 60-51 after halftime. The win also carried a little spite: Denver needed a 15-point victory to sneak into the Summer League playoffs and instead went home.

Friday's finale against the Jazz was uglier. Portland shot under 34 percent, got hammered in the paint 46-32, gave up 23 second-chance points and 25 in transition, and lost 83-79 in a game with 11 ties and 10 lead changes. Jalen Bridges scored 16, Cameron had 12 points, 6 rebounds and 4 assists, and Hansen finished with 9 points, 10 rebounds, 3 assists and 2 blocks. That closed the book on a 2-3 Vegas record, with the wins coming against Minnesota and Denver and the losses to Phoenix, Orlando and Utah, all by single digits or close to it.

Yang Hansen, Star of the Summer and Its Biggest Question

Hansen was the reason to watch. The 7-foot-1 Chinese center, the No. 16 pick in 2025 who managed just 2.2 points per game across 43 appearances as a rookie, averaged 13.0 points, 8.5 rebounds, 3.8 assists and 1.5 blocks in 24.4 minutes per game in Vegas. His high point came in the win over the Timberwolves, an 18-point, 10-rebound, 5-assist showing on 7-of-8 shooting that the NBA's own social channels celebrated. The passing is legitimately fun; Rip City Project went as far as invoking a Jokic-lite offensive skill set.

The caveats are just as real. Hansen coughed up 4.3 turnovers per game, and the same outlet bluntly described his lateral quickness as a defensive liability against NBA speed. That is the dilemma Portland takes into training camp: Hansen keeps dominating summer ball in ways that have not yet translated to real games, and with Donovan Clingan entrenched in the middle, the Blazers still have to figure out whether Hansen's offensive gifts can survive a smaller role at full speed.

The Roster Picture: Morant In, Thybulle Out, One Spot Left

The backdrop to everything is the June 29 trade that sent Jerami Grant and Kris Murray to Memphis for Ja Morant and cash. Morant, due $42.2 million next season, joins a guard room that already includes Damian Lillard, Jrue Holiday, Scoot Henderson and Shaedon Sharpe, orbiting first-time All-Star Deni Avdija, who became Portland's first All-Star since Lillard back in February. At his introductory press conference, Morant sounded like a man happy for the reset, saying his body feels great and promising Portland a different version of himself.

This week subtracted from the wing rotation instead of adding to it. On Monday, ESPN's Shams Charania reported Matisse Thybulle agreed to a one-year, $3.3 million deal with the Lakers, ending a three-season Portland stint in which injuries limited him to 45 games over the final two years. The departure leaves the Blazers with 14 players on standard deals, one open roster spot, and an odd shape: four guards under 6-foot-4, six players 6-foot-9 or taller, and precious little in between. Portland has already added around the edges this month, signing center Branden Carlson and claiming big man Micah Potter off waivers, but neither fixes the wing-defense hole Thybulle leaves behind. Worth remembering: there were no rookies to fold in, because Portland's 2026 first-rounder went to Chicago when the playoff berth stripped its lottery protection, and the second-rounder belonged to San Antonio.

Dundon's Cost-Cutting Reaches the Broadcast Booth

The week's most sour storyline had nothing to do with basketball. Forbes reported Tuesday that the Blazers, under Dundon, who bought an 80.1 percent stake for $4 billion in March, are making deep cuts to their broadcast operation. TV analyst Michael Holton is out after 19 seasons, along with statistician Tom Haberstroh and hosts Neil Everett and Jamie Hudson, while producer Greg Fonseca left for the league office. The futures of play-by-play voices Kevin Calabro and Travis Demers remain unresolved, and the team is reportedly weighing simulcasting the TV feed on radio, a model no NBA team currently uses. It follows roughly 70 front-office layoffs earlier this year and mirrors what Dundon did with the NHL's Hurricanes, where a Hall of Fame radio voice departed rather than accept an 80 percent pay cut.

The reaction was swift. Longtime Blazers reporter Sean Highkin called the moves "completely unserious" on Wednesday, accusing ownership of "actively making the product and fan experience worse purely to save money," and noted earlier belt-tightening that included keeping two-way players home from playoff road games. For a fan base being asked to buy into a Morant-Lillard era, the optics are rough.

Health Check: Lillard's Achilles and Morant's Fresh Start

Portland's ceiling next season rests on two rehab stories. Lillard, now 36, sat out all of last season recovering from the torn Achilles he suffered in the 2025 playoffs, and by his own telling he seriously weighed a late playoff comeback in the spring before shutting it down. The plan all along has pointed to a 2026-27 return. Morant's issue is less one injury than availability writ large: 79 games played over the past three seasons combined, just 70 across the last two. His public comments this month have been all reassurance, but the Blazers effectively bet the Grant contract on his body and his focus cooperating at the same time.

What's Next in Portland Trail Blazers News

The calendar now goes quiet, which does not mean nothing is happening. The to-do list between now and camp:

• Fill the 15th roster spot, ideally with a wing who can defend, the roster's most glaring gap.
• Resolve the broadcast booth, with Calabro's and Demers' situations still hanging.
• Watch the rehab reports on Lillard as informal player runs begin in September.
• Micah Nori's first camp in late September, as the new head coach, hired in June on a one-guaranteed-year deal with two team options, sorts out a five-deep guard rotation.

Training camp opens in late September, preseason follows in early October, and the regular season tips off in the third week of October, when a 42-40 team that took its first playoff trip since 2021 and pushed nobody's panic button in a five-game loss to the Spurs tries to climb higher in a loaded West.

Zoom out, and the Portland Trail Blazers are running two experiments at once: a genuinely bold basketball bet that Morant, Lillard, Avdija and a young core can leap from play-in fodder to real contender, and an ownership bet that fans will tolerate a stripped-down operation around it. Summer League offered a preview of the first experiment, Hansen's brilliance and flaws included. This week offered an unwelcome preview of the second. By October, we find out which one defines the season.