Scoot is shining amidst a s--t show you can't watch on YouTube TV
The Blazers aren't available on YouTube TV, but Scoot is showing flashes even though the Blazers have stacked everything against him.
Editor’s Note 10:40 a.m.: Shortly after publishing, it looks like tonight’s Blazers-Bucks game will be available on KUNP according to YouTube TV’s Channel Guide. Will update the post as more info comes available and to confirm that channel is not blacked out locally.
It’s a new year, the Portland Trail Blazers STILL aren’t on YouTube TV, Anfernee Simons and Jerami Grant remain on the roster and calling the coaching situation fraught would be an understatement. It may be 2025, but most of the issues Blazers fans have complained about for the past few years remain issues and it seems like the message from on high is don’t expect anything better until later.
But how much later? Joe Cronin and the current Blazers front office have had the benefits of several resets. First, when they shut Damian Lillard down for surgery in the 2021-22 season, then again a few years later when Lillard finally asked the Blazers to trade him after the front office tried to play both sides of the Lillard timeline: adding talent to help him compete like Jerami Grant and Josh Hart (before trading him for the pick that became Kris Murray), while also keeping an eye on the eventual future without him, drafting Shaedon Sharpe and Scoot Henderson. They will soon be afforded another rhetorical reset, whenever they decide to part ways with head coach Chauncey Billups, who is amidst one of the weirdest lame duck coaching seasons I’ve seen in my decade-plus covering the league professionally.
Perhaps the only comparison I can find is when the Cleveland Cavaliers hired David Blatt. Blatt, an accomplished coach at the European Level, was a bad fit with a LeBron James-led Cavaliers roster from the moment LeBron said he was coming home. But the Cavs kept him around for two reasons: ego and money. The Cavs didn’t want to pay, at the time, three different coaches since they had also recently fired Mike Brown.
In the case of the Blazers, it’s both loyalty and money holding up the issue. Joe Cronin probably wouldn’t be the GM if Chauncey Billups wasn’t the head coach, with their childhood connection from playing high school basketball in the Denver area weighing heavily. But even Billups has to know at this point where this thing is headed. His postgame press conferences are becoming even more checked out. You can tell because Billups can be very engaging and insightful, it’s one of the reasons he was good on TV. But in the reality show that is the Blazers, everybody can see that he’s over it, something the majority of the fan base already was at last year.
But hey, Vulcan Inc., the company that owns the Blazers and Seahawks, can save money while Billups is still the coach by not having to pay two coaches at the same time. That’s really why we’re all here, am I right? Who doesn’t love when billionaire hedge funds save a couple million at the expense of everyone involved?!?
Luckily for the Blazers, their player portfolio that is masquerading as a basketball team has shown some signs of growth, indicating that maybe, if they ever get their coaching situation together, maybe there is a basketball team here and not just a collection of separate player assets to be traded later.
Scoot Fighting Through
To say most of the basketball internet has left Scoot Henderson for dead would be an understatement. Even some of the most notable national voices in support of Scoot had started to waver, like Bill Simmons and Ryen Russillo. But what rarely gets discussed is how raw of a deal the young guard has gotten, being the team’s lone true point guard but being A) asked to come off the bench and B) play off the ball in favor of Simons.
Henderson does sometimes get to run the show and when he does, you see how much more organized everything is. Also with his strength and enormous hands, he’s harder to pick on on the defensive end with bigger players. His great back-to-back games against Utah and Dallas looked to restore his confidence, including a game-winner against Utah, who beat the Blazers by 40 points at home earlier this year. But it’s not just the moments that have looked good, some of the catch-all metrics are also starting to look positive for Scoot.
According to Cleaning The Glass, the Blazers are +1.1 points when Scoot Henderson is on the court vs. when he’s off the court. And most of that has actually been on the offensive end, with the Blazers adding +3.6 points to their offensive rating when Scoot is on the court. This lines up with the eye test: he’s the only guy who handles the ball that gets everyone else organized. If only the Blazers cleared the decks to actually let him do that for more than 10-15 minutes a game. Not only would it be best for Scoot and the franchise to figure out what they have, it would also probably best for Simons.
Defensively, Scoot still makes a ton of mistakes off the ball that are common for young players. If you remember watching Young Dame, you will remember him getting lost off the ball and getting caught behind screens at the wrong time all the time. What Scoot is going through is no different, but when he’s in the right place, he has all the tools to be a great defender thanks to his strength and hands. But getting in the right place will take time and experience with him, just like it did for Dame.
Simons stopped short of telling The Athletic’s Jason Quick that he wanted to be traded, but if you read between the lines, you can tell Simons wouldn’t be mad if it were to come to pass. And yet, the Blazers will run it back with what they’ve been running for the past two years, for seemingly no reason at all.
When Paul George decided he wanted to leave Oklahoma City, Sam Presti wasted no time trading Russell Westbrook almost immediately, so there would be room for younger players, like future MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, to grow. The fact that Scoot has grown as a player despite everything being stacked against him is a testament that you shouldn’t give up on this kid. At least not yet.
Deni + Toumani Frontcourt of the Future
Another positive sign of development for Portland as of late is the forward combo of Deni Avdija and Toumani Camara. You can see what they could be when they are out there. Both are incredible physical forces at the point of attack and will not get picked on defensively.
Although LeBron James put up a vintage LeBron Game against them the other night, the ability to have both of those two switch everything on defense and rarely give anything up is a building block for this team. Again, when the whole team is healthy, they won’t play as much together given the team finds themselves in with Jerami Grant and his contract. While it would make the most sense for the Blazers to find a team to take Grant on, the second apron and the new collective bargaining agreement will make it extremely hard to find a Grant trade that will bring back any positive value.
Grant, unfortunately for the Blazers hopes of getting a good return, and for him, in hopes of getting to a good team, is having the worst shooting season he’s had since he was 21, playing for the Process Sixers.
YouTube TV Fiasco
So remember when fans were told that the Blazers would be on YouTube TV in January? Well, about that. You still need a digital antenna or BlazersVision to watch the Blazers. I don’t know why YouTubeTV is blacking out KUNP, the alt-KATU channel where the Blazers air most of their games, but I can confirm that you are not crazy, they are in fact blacking out that channel.
As a YouTube TV partisan, this pisses me off because I would like to watch the Blazers on multiview with all my other NBA games and the NBA App is a glossy piece of crap that breaks all the time or forces you to delete and redownload endless times.
New Year, Same Blazers.