This morning we wanted to bring you a small smorgasbord of early season trends. Some of them will continue. Some of them will probably be early season aberrations. How can you predict which are which? THAT’S the magic of reckless sports journalism-adjacent speculation!

The Blazers will continue to be a top 3 team in pace. Especially with Damian Lillard sidelined for the year, Portland has a bunch of players who like to play fast. They also are an extraordinarily pesky defense whose generated turnovers translate into instant offense when they want to push. Therefore… they are playing fast. Especially given that there doesn’t seem to be anything pulling them to play slower so long as everyone can keep up (a legit question), there’s no structural reason why they won’t keep running. Verdict:

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