Trail Blazers News: 3 Portland Players Considered Among Most Underrated In NBA

Will they even still be on the team next season?

Feb 4, 2024; Denver, Colorado, USA; Portland Trail Blazers players Scoot Henderson, Deandre Ayton, Toumani Camara and Anfernee Simons try to recover the ball from Denver Nuggets forward Aaron Gordon. / Isaiah J. Downing-USA TODAY Sports

A pair of young Portland Trail Blazers contributors are considered some of the more slept-on players in the league!

In a new anonymous poll, The Athletic's Sam Amick and Josh Robbins quizzed 142 active NBA players between March and April of this year about an expansive variety of topics.

Most interesting for our purposes is the question of the league's most underrated players. Guard Anfernee Simons and rookie forward Toumani Camara earned nods from 1.6% of those polled players. Power forward Jerami Grant, hardly a spring chicken in the first season of a five-year, $160 million deal, recorded a single vote.

Simons, still just 24, is essentially a Gen Z C.J. McCollum -- a dynamite scorer who's unfortunately a 6'3" shooting guard and a defensive sieve. In his 46 healthy games this year, he averaged 22.6 points on a .436/.385/.916 slash line, 5.5 assists, 3.6 rebounds, and 0.5 assists for the Blazers.

Camara, a defense-first swingman out of Dayton, became a starter for 49 of his 70 debut games with the club. He's a bit raw, but intriguing, and clearly his effort on defense is impressing his peers.

Both these young Blazers seem destined to stick around for a good long while as the team continues to develop its youth movement.

Despite another solid season, Grant's future in Portland, meanwhile, is incredibly tenuous. He's a solid two-way player whose defensive versatility and slick jumper could endear him to any number of playoff contenders, though his hefty annual sticker tag may give some clubs pause.

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