Scouting one-pager: Portland Trail Blazers (POR)
2025-26 regular season · 82 games · 7,389 FGA. Auto-generated by scouting/build_onepager.py from public data; every number traceable to a gated pipeline in this repo. Shot pricing uses the 2023-24 shot-quality model, whose season-out transfer was validated in the backtest; shot-making is empirical-Bayes shrunk before it is allowed to drive a conclusion.
Terms
- PPS: Points per shot: total points on field-goal attempts divided by attempts. Free throws excluded.
- xPPS: Expected points per shot - the model's fair price of a shot diet: what an average shooter would score on the same attempts, judged from location and shot type alone, before knowing what went in.
- shot-making: Actual minus expected points per 100 shots: conversion above or below what the shot diet itself explains. Positive means making shots the model prices as hard.
- EB making: A player's shot-making after empirical-Bayes shrinkage: the observed number pulled toward the league mean in proportion to its sampling noise. The number to trust for projection.
- FGA: Field-goal attempts.
- RAPM: Regularized adjusted plus-minus: a ridge regression crediting each player with net points per 100 possessions while adjusting for the other nine players on the floor.
- net_100: Net points per 100 possessions: 100 x plus-minus / possessions; sits on the same scale as the NBA's published net rating.
- rush: Shots in the final four seconds of a period - the desperation window where both shot selection and execution collapse.
- empirical Bayes: Estimate the spread of true skill across the league from the data, then pull each individual's noisy estimate toward the league mean in proportion to its noise.
- shrinkage weight: The fraction of an observed number that survives empirical-Bayes regression: 1 means fully trusted, 0 means replaced by the league mean.
- CI: Confidence interval.
Keys
- Rim-pressure offense: 31.8% of attempts at the rim vs league 28.4%. Wall building beats switching small.
- Volume-three profile: 46.9% of attempts from deep (league 41.5%).
- Jrue Holiday is a genuine shot-maker: +3.5 pts/100 above expectation after empirical-Bayes shrinkage; contest even the bad shots.
- Best shot diet: Donovan Clingan (1.24 xPPS on 684 FGA). The value is where the shots come from; deny the spot, not the release.
- Their most-used five that wins its minutes: D. Avdija - S. Sharpe - K. Murray - T. Camara - D. Clingan (+5.3/100 over 225 possessions).
Shot profile vs league
| POR | League | Δ |
|---|
| PPS (points per shot) | 1.067 | 1.091 | -0.024 |
| xPPS, the shot-diet price* | 1.122 | 1.097 | +0.025 |
| Shot-making, pts/100 vs model | -5.4 | -0.5 | -4.9 |
| Rim share | 31.8% | 28.4% | +3.4 pp |
| Mid-range share | 6.5% | 10.0% | -3.6 pp |
| Three share | 46.9% | 41.5% | +5.3 pp |
| Corner share of threes | 25.5% | 25.9% | -0.4 pp |
| Final-4s (rush) shot share | 1.9% | 1.8% | +0.0 pp |
* xPPS prices where they shoot from, independent of whether shots fell: the stable, scoutable part of the profile (year-over-year r ≈ .9).
Personnel (top 8 by volume)
| Player | FGA | PPS | xPPS (diet) | Making/100 | EB making | RAPM/100 |
|---|
| Deni Avdija | 1,064 | 1.042 | 1.076 | -3.4 | -2.8 | +0.1 |
| Toumani Camara | 891 | 1.126 | 1.139 | -1.3 | -1.1 | +0.1 |
| Shaedon Sharpe | 868 | 1.022 | 1.074 | -5.2 | -4.1 | -0.5 |
| Jerami Grant | 730 | 1.093 | 1.100 | -0.7 | -0.6 | -0.2 |
| Jrue Holiday | 709 | 1.096 | 1.042 | +5.4 | +3.5 | +3.3 |
| Donovan Clingan | 684 | 1.164 | 1.243 | -7.9 | -5.8 | +0.3 |
| Caleb Love | 490 | 0.965 | 1.053 | -8.7 | -5.4 | -1.5 |
| Scoot Henderson | 342 | 1.003 | 1.070 | -6.7 | -3.8 | +0.5 |
EB making = shot-making regressed to league mean by reliability: the number to trust. RAPM from the opponent-adjusted 2025-26 lineup model (±≈3/100 CI at a season of minutes; treat as descriptive).
Most-used lineups
| Lineup | Min | Poss | Net/100 |
|---|
| J. Holiday - J. Grant - D. Avdija - T. Camara - D. Clingan | 160 | 343 | +0.3 |
| J. Holiday - D. Avdija - S. Sharpe - T. Camara - D. Clingan | 150 | 331 | -3.0 |
| D. Avdija - S. Sharpe - K. Murray - T. Camara - D. Clingan | 109 | 225 | +5.3 |