Alex Speers

He's been very productive.

He's been turning the ball over a lot, sure, but been very productive.

My bet here is that the Blazers are locked into a playing spot.

scoot's going to be eligible for an extension this summer they desperately need more offensive juice and so emphasizing scoot the rest of the season should be a priority like there's not a huge risk even if he's bad that they're going to like fall out of the plan yeah he's only gotten 20 minutes per game so far while on a minute's restriction i'm hoping that begins to increase and he's up near 30 per game by the end of the season even if drew is healthy and

And similar to Matherin, another thing I've got going for me is the schedule.

The Portland Trailblazers have the easiest remaining schedule per tank-a-thon.

12 of their final 26 games are against teams currently outside the play-in.

So maybe some of my minutes concerns could be helped by blowouts where Scoot's going to get an extended run at the end of games.

As for a prediction, I think for this to count, I need Scoot

to get up to something like 19 points, seven assists, getting to the line five plus times per game, improved efficiency, especially at the rim.

I think he's got to hit that for this to even count.

Okay.

So I'm setting the bar kind of high.

It feels bold given what we've seen so far in Scoot's career.

But I'm betting that this stretch run ends up being the breakout stretch of his young career.

Basically, the way I tried to do this, I really focused on Denny and Giddy because both of those guys were averaging in the teens previously.

And they were on teams that were in the play-in.

And I do think that matters.

They weren't on tanking teams.

They were on teams that were trying.