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Portland Trail Blazers All-Star-in-waiting Deni Avdija is riding high through the 2025-26 NBA season. 26 points, 7 rebounds, and 7 assists per game will bring plenty of notice and praise. But the journey from Point A to Point ASG wasn’t easy for the 6’8 do-everything player. Avdija came up through the international ranks in his home country of Israel, where his talent and young age put a mark on his back. That’s the story that Jason Quick of The Athletic told today in an extensive biographical piece on Portland’s star [subscription required]. The piece is the usual mix of enchanting, dramatic Quick prose elevating homespun, personal stories. Of Avdija’s trials as a youth, Quick writes: Every day included either coaches yelling at him or players bullying him with bumps, elbows and pushes. “I knew his potential, and because of that, I wanted to make it tough on him,” said Maccabi’s Oded Shalom, who coached Avdija on his Under-15 and Under-16 teams. “I wanted to make his life hard.” Shalom had older and bigger kids guard Avdija. When he played for the senior Maccabi teams, Avdija said coaches cursed at him. Frustrated, he would often return home, retreat to his room and cry. “It brought down my joy for playing the game, because everybody saw me as that guy with potential who hasn’t blossomed yet,” Avdija said. “I had all that pressure in every workout, in every game, to prove myself.”Deni Avdija (10) being coached by Oded Shalom with his Maccabi Tel Aviv U-16 team.Photo courtesy Oded Shalom At home, there was little sympathy. His father, Zufer, is what Avdija describes as “a hard-nosed, old-school Balkan.” In his day, he was a 6-foot-8 forward for the Yugoslavian national team who later played in the Israeli professional league. “He’s a ‘back-in-the-day, we-ran-up-mountains’ type of guy, and he tried to get me to be like that,” Avdija said of his father. His mother, Sharon, is an Israeli who was a standout runner who also played basketball. She is more nurturing than Zufer, but also carries expectations of excellence in competition. “Car rides home had a lot of criticism, so every game was emotional, and it just kind of drained me,” he said.The teasing. The cursing. The criticism. The doubts. They cut him, but never pierced him. Instead, he formed a layer of protection that he compared to a callus. “It all made me tough — like, really, really tough,” Avdija said. “You know how you run a lot and your feet start to get thick skin on them? It was like that. The more I would hear (criticisms), the more I would think, ‘This is nothing.’ I had been dealing with it so much that I got to a point where it was like, ‘I don’t care.’” Quick also relays that Avdija had a hard time finding a fit in Portland after the Washington Wizards traded him there in 2024. Now-suspended Head Coach Chauncey Billups simplified Avdija’s assignment to: rebound, run, and make something happen, which unlocked his potential. The article delves into Avdija’s reflections on his home country of Israel—including his homesickness for the land in which he grew—and the forward’s uncomfortable relationship with political and social media demands made upon him. “I’m an athlete. I don’t really get into politics, because it’s not my job,” Avdija said. “I obviously stand for my country, because that’s where I’m from. It’s frustrating to see all the hate. Like, I have a good game or get All-Star votes, and all the comments are people connecting me to politics. Like, why can’t I just be a good basketball player? Why does it matter if I’m from Israel, or wherever in the world, or what my race is? Just respect me as a basketball player. “You don’t have to love what I stand for or how I look, but if I’m a good player, give props. All this hate … for no reason. Like, I’m deciding things in the world.” Avdija also claims that people who understand the Middle East intimately should have a voice in public discourse, but he invites those who “are not educated” to just remain quiet…

Yang Hansen made headlines the moment the Portland Trail Blazers selected him in the first round of the 2025 NBA Draft. The world waited to see if the prodigy from China would make a splash in the American league. So far, he hasn’t. The 7’1 center has appeared in 25 games, averaging just 8.4 minutes per. It’s not surprising, then, that when Danny Chau of The Ringer assembled a list of 15 rookies to watch at the midway point of the season, Yang’s name wasn’t among them. But you know who did make that list? Equally surprising Trail Blazers rookie Caleb Love. 11.1 points over 36 games was enough to get Love onto the national radar alongside players like VJ Edgecome, Cedric Coward, and Derik Queen. Of Love, Chau writes: It’s hard to make sense of who Love really is. He is a two-way player for the Portland Trail Blazers, an undrafted 24-year-old free agent who wasn’t even invited to the 2025 draft combine. He had a career 38 percent field goal percentage over the course of five college seasons at North Carolina and Arizona. He shot 35 percent in five NBA summer league games. He shot 33 percent from the field in his first 21 regular-season games. Simply put, there is a large sample of Love being an eager but woefully inefficient shooter. But then what are we to make of the 14-game stretch in which Love looked like Damian Lillard reincarnate, stepping up for a Blazers squad decimated by backcourt injuries? For about a month from late December to mid-January, Love went on one of the most impressive and improbable hot streaks of any player this season, averaging 16.8 points per game almost exclusively off the bench and shooting 45.5 percent from the field and 40.7 percent from 3 (on 8.4 attempts!). Assuming Love averages out somewhere between the two poles of this season’s performance, he’ll still be a useful rotation player. He is a dead ringer basketball-wise for Eric Gordon: They’re almost identical in their burly builds, right down to the massive wingspan relative to their 6-foot-3 frames. Gordon was far more explosive at his athletic peak, but Love has the more natural comportment as a shooter, both off movement and off the dribble. The bulk of Gordon’s 19-year career has been built on his reliability as a high-volume shooter who can serve as a secondary or tertiary creator in a pinch while holding his ground on defense. Love has already shattered expectations for his NBA career; even if this blistering run peters out, he has a perfect blueprint for longevity. What do you think? Is Love the brightest prospect among Portland’s new players or does Yang still reign? Or Sidy Cissoko? Share your thoughts about Love and company in the comments below. And please help us send kids in need to see the Blazers play in March. Here’s the website the Blazers themselves have set up to donate tickets!

Newport Buzz Providence City Council’s Rent-Control Plan Sparks Backlash as Mayor Smiley Signals Veto Providence lawmakers are barreling toward one of the most aggressive housing experiments in Rhode Island history — and critics warn renters could end up paying the price. The City Council is set to introduce a rent control ordinance this week that would cap annual rent increases at 4% for many apartments across the city, marking the first serious attempt to impose rent control anywhere in the state. Under the 17-page proposal, landlords would be barred from raising rents beyond 4% […] The post Providence City Council’s Rent-Control Plan Sparks Backlash as Mayor Smiley Signals Veto appeared first on Newport Buzz.