The Portland Trail Blazers will open the regular season Wednesday night at home against the Golden State Warriors. That means the final NBA power rankings of the preseason have been rolling in from national media outlets like the fall breeze the last few weeks.

Spoiler alert: The Blazers landed near the bottom in all of the lists.

Apart from the expected low ranking, these lists came with some analysis of the Blazers. Most of this analysis dealt with dreams of Cooper Flagg, hopeful development of key young pieces, possible trades involving veterans and lots of losses.

To make it easy, we’ve compiled the Blazers’ spot in these rankings and some of that accompanying analysis all in one place. It’ll give a sense of the general opinion of the Blazers from a national perspective heading into the 2024-25 season.

(We already covered The Athletic’s John Hollinger’s regular-season prediction for Portland last week. If you missed it, here’s the link.)

Yahoo Sports: Take The Under on 21.5 Wins

In Yahoo Sports’ Dan Devine’s regular-season preview of the Blazers published on Thursday, he didn’t provide league-wide power rankings. However, he projected the Blazers to be one of the worst teams in the NBA, expecting Portland to finish with less than 21.5 regular-season wins.

Hope springs eternal in the preseason — which, in this case, means the Blazers will be both terrible on their merits and able to offload their helpful veterans with enough time to really rack up the L’s on the back-half of the schedule. I’ll take the under; it wouldn’t surprise me if this year’s model gives the 1971-72 crew a run for its money as the worst team in franchise history.

Devine’s piece was more than just a low win total. It went past the usual blurb and included an overarching question that defines Portland’s season: “Is there really a cornerstone here?” Devine shared thoughts on Scoot Henderson, Shaedon Sharpe and others in relation to that subject. He also gave a best-case scenario for Portland’s season:

Ayton, Grant, Avdija and Simons spend the first half of the season providing some semblance of a stable infrastructure in which to evaluate Sharpe, Henderson, Clingan and the rest of Portland’s young pieces. Some of them show real signs of growth and development — the kind of sparks and flickers that increase your confidence these guys really can become the foundation of what’s next. And then, with that renewed belief in hand, Cronin’s able to spin off several of the veterans — most notably one of either Ayton or Robert Williams III — to reduce Portland’s positional redundancy, clearing the runway for Clingan and the guards to experience their growing pains while paving the path to another top-of-the-lottery pick to augment and solidify the young core.

I put Devine’s piece first for a reason. If you’re looking for some more Blazers reading this Sunday — after you’ve already read columns from Dave Deckard and Adrian Bernecich, of course — this is the one from this bunch to click on.

The Ringer: No. 28

Handling power-ranking duties for The Ringer, Justin Verrier, Rob Mahoney and Wosny Lambre of “The Group Chat” podcast put Portland at No. 28 in an episode that aired on Sept. 26. The Blazers discussion in that podcast starts at the 40:02 mark and ends at 1:00:12. Verrier said the Blazers have some intriguing young pieces on the roster, but they’re still a year or two away from tangibly competing.

The big issue with this team at this point isn’t so much the players that they have, it’s just that they’re super young. There is something here that I can kind of see nowadays, but I do think they’re going to have to play, if not through this season, maybe next season, to even get to the starting point of where some of these 20- and 21-year-old guys are going to be able to compete on a high level.

NBA.com: No. 15 in the West

NBA.com’s John Schuhmann divided his power rankings by conference. At the end of September, he ranked the Blazers last in the West, while saying Portland’s young guards could provide a major silver lining.

But they do have a pair of guards – Henderson and Shaedon Sharpe – who could make big leaps in the next nine months. Henderson has nowhere to go but up given how much he struggled as a rookie, ranking last in effective field goal percentage among 174 players with 500 field goal attempts) and having the second worst on-court NetRtg among 222 players who averaged at least 20 minutes per game. It would be surprising if this wasn’t a fourth straight season in the bottom three in the Western Conference, but serious progress from the young guards would make the long-term outlook a lot brighter.

Fox Sports: Bottom Tier – “Cooper Flagg Watch”

Fox Sports NBA writer Yaron Weitzman split his power rankings into six tiers. The Blazers landed in the sixth and final tier, comprised of team’s that’ll have the best chance to get 2025 Draft prize Cooper flag. That tier was one rung below a tier titled “Yawn.”

Portland has some talented players. But they’re all really raw and young. At some point, the Blazers are going to have to shift into trying to win games. But that’s still probably a year away.

CBS Sports: No. 27

Colin Ward-Henninger of CBS Sports dropped his power rankings at the start of October, placing the Blazers at No. 27. Similar to the other takes in this roundup, Ward-Henninger said he liked Portland’s young talent, it just won’t translate to much winning yet.

As a note, his projected starting lineup is incorrect. It omitted Deni Avdija and was written before Sharpe’s injury/Toumani Camara’s strong preseason, which has made it unclear whether Henderson will start opening night. With all that said, the sentiment of Ward-Henninger’s argument remains true.

Portland has a lot of talented young pieces — it’s just a matter of getting them all on the court at the same time. Listen, they’re not going to be good, but a starting lineup of Scoot Henderson, Anfernee Simons, Shaedon Sharpe, Jerami Grant and Deandre Ayton should at least be competitive from night to night. Rookie Donovan Clingan won’t need much of a learning curve, and if Robert Williams III can give them anything, Chauncey Billups will be able to present some matchup nightmares with his lineup options.

So when you add it all up, the preseason speculation points to another difficult season in Portland. Great readers of Blazer’s Edge, do the pundits have it right, or will Portland be better than expected this season?