Features
How Norman Stein, a long-time teacher in Winnipeg Jewish schools transitioned into an enventful career in the music business
By BERNIE BELLAN
In May 2021 I began what was supposed to have been a two-part story about the life of a man, Norman Stein, who left an indelible impression on so many Jewish students during his teaching career in the Jewish school system, which began in the 1950s and ended in 1967.
But – I’ve long been a procrastinator; it’s taken me over two years to return to Stein’s story.
Now 91, Stein left Winnipeg many years ago, but he still recalls his years teaching here – at the Talmud Torah, Joseph Wolinsky Collegiate, and the Rosh Pina Hebrew School, with great fondness.
When I published that initial story about Stein’s teaching career, which I began by delving into his childhood growing up first on Pritchard Avenue, later on Redwood, and finally on St. Anthony, I attempted to transcribe a line in Yiddish that I had recorded Stein as saying, but I mangled that line.
Here again is the anecdote Stein related about one time when he had wandered off on a Friday evening into the Ukrainian Labour Temple on the corner of Burrows and McGregor:
“Anyway, one Erev Shabbes – I was three or four, I snuck into the theatre and the manager asked me who I was looking for?
“I told him I was looking for my mommy. He said, ‘You just sit here’, and the next thing I know I’m watching the Priscilla Lane sisters playing tennis in their white shorts. I remembered that.
“The manager called me out and said, ‘Your mother’s here now.’ And I wondered, how could that be? because my mother doesn’t even know I’m here. I go out and there’s my mother and Mrs. Rubinfield, who ran a grocery store a few doors down, and had a pay phone – which they avoided using on Shabbes – but they called the police and the police asked, ‘Is there a favourite place he likes to go?’ and my mother said I like to go to the movies, so the police said: Maybe he went to the Labour Temple.’”
As Stein explained what happened next, when he was confronted outside the Labour Temple by his mother, Mrs. Rubinfield, and a “Bobby” who was with them, in addition to being scolded for wandering into the movie theatre, the Bobby added: “And you didn’t even pay”, to which, Stein said he answered (and remember, this is a four-year-old) – and this is the line I got completely wrong: “M’tur nisht trugen kein gelt oif Shabbes” – “You mustn’t carry any money on Shabbes.”
It may have taken me 26 months for me to correct that adulteration of the Yiddish language, but when I contacted Stein again recently to ask him whether he’d be willing to continue with the story of his Winnipeg years, the first thing he told me is how miserably I had failed in trying to transcribe that line.
Despite that very grave error, however, Stein did tell me that he quite enjoyed the May 2021 interview piece. I told him that piece also evoked a very strong and warm response from many of his former students and that many of them had told me they were very much looking forward to the sequel.
I ended the first part of my story about Stein by noting that, in 1966, he was involved in a very serious car accident when his car was rear ended by a truck. He said, “That’s a period I don’t remember well… I was in a coma for some time. I was a nervous wreck. My doctor suggested I go to some place relaxing, so I went to Hollywood.”
Thus began the next chapter of Norman Stein’s life, which we now take up here:
Stein was working for RCA Records in the A&R (artists & repertoire) department. One day a young, barefoot Black girl came in with a demo tape. She said her name was Natalie Cole (daughter of Nat King Cole).
Stein asked her why she didn’t take her demo tape to Capitol Records, since that’s where Nat King Cole had a recording contract? “She said she didn’t want to be attached to his apron strings,” Stein explained.
Apparently though, Natalie Cole was upset with Stein “and she stormed out of there.” I asked Stein whether there were any other memorable moments from his time in California, and he mentioned that he was still in the United States during the time of the Six-Day War in June 1967.
“The Israeli Philharmonic was touring in the States at the time and I did some PR for them. There was a celebratory concert at the Hollywood Bowl and the guest artist was Jack Benny.”
While he was still in California, Rabbi Witty, who was the then-principal of the Talmud Torah and Joseph Wolinsky Collegiate had phoned Stein and had asked him whether he would be prepared to resume teaching the humanities courses that he had taught to students in Grades 7-12 at JWC for years, including courses in the history of music and the history of art, philosophy, and library science.
I remember taking Stein’s course on the history of art. Part of the course was devoted to a study of architecture. Stein recalled how enthusiastic so many of the students in my particular class were when he gave us an assignment to “take photographs of sites in Winnipeg that would be comparable to some in Ancient Greece by the way they photographed.”
Stein did resume teaching those courses in the fall of 1967, but when he asked to take a leave of absence to attend various music conventions, Tamara Wiseman, who was the vice-principal of the Talmud Torah at the time thought that “it wasn’t fair to the students that I had to leave town to go to conventions to pursue a career in music,” and without even being given a chance to say good bye to his students, Stein was told that he should just “leave.”
I said to Stein that I had heard from someone by the name of John Einarson, who is arguably Manitoba’s foremost music historian – and who gave a brilliant presentation during a recent Jewish Heritage Centre event titled “The Soundtracks of our Lives” about Jewish musicians in Winnipeg through the years, that Einarson had worked for Stein at a time when Stein was selling records out of the back of Strain’s Camera Store on Portage Avenue.
I asked Stein whether he began doing that around the time his teaching career ended (in 1967)?
“We couldn’t get into Polo Park (because Polo Park wouldn’t allow a record store at that time) so we opened in the back of Strain’s (which was owned by the late Manny Wiseman. One of Manny Wiseman’s sons, Bob, went on to become one of the founding members of Blue Rodeo.)
“People were only going up to the camera department and we rarely got anyone coming into our section,” Stein observed.
In 1969, Stein made the move that was eventually to lead to a 10-year period when he achieved his greatest recognition in Winnipeg – with the opening of the famed Opus 69 record store.
“There was space above Clifford’s Ladies Wear “(at 412 Portage Avenue, the corner of Kennedy and Portage), Stein continued. (Cliffords was owned by Johnny Pollock. One of Pollocks’ sons, Harold, went on to become a renowned classical guitarist.)
Thus began Opus 69. Around the same time Stein became host of a nightly program on CKY FM called “Now Flower.” Randy Moffat was the owner of CKY at the time and he was so impressed with the program – and the number of different recordings that Stein was able to play that CKY “even put a console in Opus 69 with live broadcasting by a DJ between noon and 6 pm.”
I remarked that I remember well that second floor location for Opus 69 and how popular it was.
Stein suggested “that small location became the most popular record store in Winnipeg.”
In a 2016 article for the Free Press, John Einarson wrote about the huge impression Opus 69 made on music fans in Winnipeg when it first opened: “Once Opus 69 opened in the spring of 1969 on Kennedy Street just south of Portage, above an optometrist’s shop, it became my destination for music. Opus 69 specialized almost exclusively in rock music and had the most extensive selection in the city, including imported recordings, as well as listening stations to sample before you purchased.
“I remember the first time my friend and I did that, never having used headphones before,” recalls Grant Edwards.“We were busy yelling to each other until one of the workers asked us to please stop yelling as no one else in the store was listening to headphones.”
Unfortunately, while owner Norman Stein had great taste in records, his business acumen was wanting, and when Opus 69 moved to the more spacious ground-floor store on Kennedy north of Portage in the early ’70s it was under new ownership. However, it continued to boast a wide selection and knowledgeable staff.”
Around the same time that Stein was running Opus 69 he also had a company called “Campus Records Distributors,” which sold records to university bookstores across Canada. Campus Records was eventually bought by Deutsche Grammaphone.
As John Einarson noted, “Opus 69 moved to a new location on Kennedy Street (across from what used to be the Town and Country), but by the early 1970s Norman Stein was no longer the owner.” (He told me, during our interview, that he didn’t want to get into what happened with the business. Suffice to say that, by 1979, Opus was in receivership. Stein had long been out of the picture when that happened.)
Stein said that he remained in Winnipeg with his ailing mother until she passed, in 1980. Shortly thereafter, he moved to Vancouver. He did talk about his career in Vancouver, but I said to him that I preferred to keep the focus on Winnipeg.
Before our conversation ended though, Stein said he wanted to tell me one more story from his childhood – when he was about four. The story had to do with the quaint Jewish custom of “shlogn kapores,” during which on Erev Yom Kippur a chicken (or a rooster) is waved over one’s head and one’s sins are transferred to said chicken or rooster.
Here’s how Stein described how the ritual was practiced in his home – and what happened one year: “You have a tablecloth over a table, you take the live rooster and swing it around your head and say certain prayers from a Siddur (prayer book). When you do that you put the live rooster under the table, then you take it to the shochet for Yom Tov.
“Well, this rooster kept pecking at my wrists and hurting me but I was holding on tight, so I threw the rooster under the table. When I pulled it out, it had a limp neck. It was dead. I bawled my head off because it meant the rooster could not have absorbed all my sins. My mother was upset because she didn’t have a tarnigol (Hebrew for rooster) for Yom Tov.”
I asked: “Because it wasn’t slaughtered properly?”
Stein replied: “How could it be slaughtered? I choked it to death. It had an overdose of sins!”
I said to him that so many of his former students offered reminiscences, both in our newspaper and in the Facebook group “1950s and 60s Winnipeg Jewish Students”, about his having been their teacher, that I wondered whether he would be amenable to hearing from former students.
I mentioned to him that one of the contributors to that Facebook group was David Steinberg. I asked Stein whether he had ever had Steinberg as a student? That led him to tell this story:
“When I was teaching in the Rosh Pina Hebrew School the synagogue youth group had socials and David performed his jokes on stage. As I was teaching him, he knew, as an opportunist, that I had some connections with Chicago. He wanted to go to Second City – the famous comedy thing. He could not get in, but he could if he was a yeshiva student. So I wrote a letter to the yeshiva on his behalf and he got accepted into the Hebrew Theological College (from where Stein had also graduated) and, after that the Rosh Yeshiva said to me: ’So where is your David Steinberg?’ He disappeared after a while and Second City had rented in the Jewish community centre across the street from the yeshiva. I never saw him again until one year – it was around 1970, I went to Greenwich Village and saw a poster for a folk music group. At the bottom it said ‘opening act: David Steinberg.’
“A door opened and who comes out but David Steinberg? I said ‘Dudi?’ and he said, ‘Uh, your face is a little familiar…Oh yes, Norman, here’s my business card and we’ll have coffee in my private apartment ….and I never went to his apartment.”
I asked Stein whethe he would be amenable to my putting his phone number into this article so that former students could get in touch with him.
Although each time I’ve phoned Stein, we’ve had very pleasant conversations, I’m not sure whether he would have the stamina to engage in phone convesations on a regular basis with former students. Still, if he’s tired or preoccupied doing something else, I’m sure he would let anyone know. And, even though he says he has trouble remembering things, I certainly didn’t find that to be the case. Stein did say that he wouldn’t have any objection to my putting his phone number into this article, so here it is: 1-604-269-0961. Remember, he’s in Vancouver, so bear in mind the time zone that he’s in if you do plan on calling him.
Features
“The Desert Doesn’t Forget” – a short story
By H. C. Piloski
Foreword
This story is loosely based on a true event shared between father and son. The exact year has blurred with time — somewhere in the early to mid1960s — but the Las Vegas my father described was unmistakably the Las Vegas of that era: hot, bright, and dangerous in ways polite men didn’t discuss.
Many years after the incident, my father introduced me to one of the businessmen involved. As we approached him, my father leaned in and whispered that I was not to mention Las Vegas — not to ask, not to hint, not even to let the word cross my mind. The warning was quiet, but firm, and it told me more than any story could.
The details here have been fictionalized, but the core incident — a trip abruptly cut short after a threatening encounter — comes from those private recollections. Some memories fade, others distort, but certain moments remain sharp as desert glass. This is one of them.
Las Vegas, 1965
The desert air hit Harold Bernstein like a blast furnace the moment he stepped off the plane — not just heat, but a smell, too. A dry, mineral sting carrying dust, sun cooked metal, and the faint tang of jet fuel settling over the tarmac.
Winnipeg men weren’t built for this. They were built for honest cold, for wind that cut straight and didn’t pretend to be anything else.
Harold paused at the top of the stairs, blinking against the glare. Miriam had tucked a small prayer book into his suitcase “just in case.” He almost smiled. There was no “case” for this — not the kind Miriam meant, anyway.
He and his business partner, Leonard “Lenny” Krawitz, ran Bernstein & Krawitz Apparel Distributors — a respectable prairie outfit, steady as a metronome. They’d been raised in the North End — synagogue basements, rye bread, and quiet rules — but now lived in Tuxedo, where the houses were larger, the streets quieter, and success felt like something you had to defend.
Harold had known Solly Markowitz since they were boys in the North End — same streets, same synagogue basement — but Solly had always moved faster, talked faster, lived faster. Too fast.
Rumors drifted back over the years like smoke: Vegas. Casinos. “Connections.” And the darkest whisper of all — that Solly had been with Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel the night Siegel was shot to death in his Los Angeles home in 1947.
Siegel, one of the architects of modern Las Vegas, had built his empire on danger. Siegel’s murder was never officially solved. Men tied to Siegel didn’t retire. They drifted into darker corners.
You don’t play around with the mob.
Still, Solly called every few years. Usually around the High Holidays. Usually to ask if anyone remembered his parents.
This time, he had a business proposition.
“A warehouse,” Solly said. “Distribution. Vegas is booming. You boys could expand. And listen — you’ll be dealing with our people. Markowitz runs things on this end. Good man. Efficient. You’ll be safe.”
Harold didn’t trust men who promised safety.
But Lenny was curious. And Harold had been partners with him long enough to know that curiosity was a tide you didn’t fight. So they booked two tickets, packed their best suits, and flew into the desert.
The Strip
The taxi was a 1965 Dodge Coronet, the kind every Vegas cab company seemed to buy in bulk — boxy, dependable, sun bleached around the edges. Its vinyl seats were hot enough to sting through Harold’s trousers, carrying the ingrained smell of desert dust, gasoline, and a hundred previous fares who’d sweated their way down the Strip.
The driver wore a shortsleeved white shirt and a narrow black tie, loosened past respectability. A pack of Luckies sat tucked above the visor. He didn’t talk. Vegas drivers rarely did. They’d seen too much, and they knew silence was sometimes the safest tip a man could give.
Neon signs flickered to life in the early evening glare — reds, blues, golds shimmering like they were trying to outshine the sun itself. Billboards shouted from every corner:
FRANK SINATRA — LIVE AT THE SANDS; SAMMY DAVIS JR. — TONIGHT ONLY; DEAN MARTIN — MIDNIGHT SHOW; DON RICKLES — ONE NIGHT ONLY — CAESAR’S PALACE
Harold watched the lights smear past the window. Vegas looked like a city built by men who didn’t believe in consequences — men who thought the world could be rewritten in neon and smoke.
At a stoplight, Harold noticed a man in a dark suit standing outside the Desert Inn. Ninety degrees even after sundown, yet the man didn’t sweat. He stared at their cab with the flat, patient look of someone waiting for a decision already made.
Harold looked away.
Their hotel was one of the older ones — brass fixtures dulled by fingerprints, red carpets worn thin, cigarette smoke curling under chandeliers. The casino floor hummed with slot machines, dice clattering, and the low murmur of gamblers who had already lost more than they could afford.
Harold felt the city watching him.
They checked in, rode the elevator up, and began unpacking. Lenny talked about expansion, about opportunity. Harold listened, nerves tight.
Then came the knock.
The Knock
A heavy, deliberate thud — the kind that didn’t wait for permission.
Lenny froze. Harold felt his pulse climb into his throat.
Lenny opened the door.
Two men stood there — tall, broad, wearing dark suits that didn’t belong in the Nevada heat. Their faces were blank, carved from something that didn’t melt. One shifted slightly, revealing the unmistakable outline of a holstered pistol.
“You’re Bernstein and Krawitz,” the first man said. His voice was calm, almost bored — the tone of someone who had delivered this message before.
Harold nodded before he realized he’d done it.
“Mr. Markowitz appreciates your interest,” the second man said. “But he doesn’t want you involved. Not now. Not ever.”
Lenny swallowed. “We just got here—”
The first man stepped forward, jacket pulling back just enough to show steel. “If you stay,” he said, “the desert will take you. And the desert doesn’t give anything back.”
They turned and walked away without waiting for a response.
Lenny closed the door slowly.
“Harold,” he whispered, “we’re leaving.”
Harold was already zipping his suitcase.
The Retreat
They moved through the casino like ghosts. The noise felt distant, muffled, as if the city itself were holding its breath. Harold avoided eye contact with everyone — dealers, tourists, men in suits who always seemed to be standing just far enough away to pretend they weren’t watching.
At the front desk, Harold slid their room keys across the counter. The clerk raised an eyebrow.
“Checking out already, sir? You just arrived.”
“Change of plans,” Harold said. His voice sounded like it belonged to someone else.
Outside, a row of gleaming Cadillacs and Lincolns lined the valet area, their long bodies catching the neon glow like blades. The desert air smelled different now — harsher, metallic, as if the heat itself were warning them. The Strip looked less like a playground, more like a trap.
At the Western Airlines counter, Harold’s hands shook so badly he dropped his wallet. They managed to get seats on a late flight to Los Angeles, with a connection north to Winnipeg. Luck, or something like it, was still on their side.
On the jet, Lenny stared straight ahead, silent. Harold didn’t speak either.
When the aircraft began its run, the engines didn’t just roar — they howled, a rising metallic fury that made the cabin tremble. Harold gripped the armrests as the desert dropped away beneath them, Las Vegas shrinking into a glittering lie the desert never bothers to hide.
Only when they were safely above the clouds did Lenny finally whisper, “What do you think that was about?”
Harold didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.
They both knew.
Home Again
Back in Winnipeg, winter arrived early. Harold welcomed it. Snow didn’t lie. Cold didn’t threaten. The prairie wind didn’t bury men in unmarked graves.
Their wives were waiting at the airport, bundled in coats, cheeks pink from the cold.
“You’re home early,” Miriam said, frowning.
“Business fell through,” Harold said. “Whole thing was a waste.”
Esther looked from her husband to Harold, suspicious. “Barely two days?”
“Solly wasn’t organized,” Lenny said quickly. “Nothing to see.”
Miriam touched Harold’s arm. “You look pale.”
“Heat,” Harold said. “Didn’t agree with me.”
It was the closest he had ever come to lying to her.
That night, Miriam asked again. “Something happened.”
Harold kissed her forehead. “Nothing we need to talk about.”
She didn’t press. Tuxedo wives knew when a door was meant to stay closed.
A week later, Solly called.
“Boys! You never showed! Markowitz said you headed home early. Shame — I had everything lined up. Next time, we’ll make sure things are clearer.”
Harold hung up without answering.
Lenny unplugged the phone.
They never spoke of the trip again.
Not to their wives. Not to their families. Not to the men at shul or the ones they played cards with on Thursday nights.
Some stories were too heavy to carry into daylight.
Years Later
Decades passed. Their children grew. Their hair thinned. Their business went to younger hands.
Sometimes, late at night, Harold would wake in the middle of the dark, heart pounding, hearing that knock again — heavy, deliberate, final.
And he would think of Solly. Of Vegas. Of the desert.
How it didn’t forget. How it didn’t forgive. How close he and Lenny had come to disappearing into it.
Features
Turkey’s Rising Power Worries Israel
By HENRY SREBRNIK It has long shared intelligence with Iran, and it remains the only NATO country to have refrained from sanctioning Russia after its 2022 invasion of Ukraine. It is, along with Qatar, the main international sponsor of the Muslim Brotherhood, including its Palestinian branch, Hamas. Its poor human rights record consistently stir unease among NATO allies.
This is President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey. He wants his country to become the preeminent power in the Middle East. If Iran emerges from the current war with Israel and the United States weakened, whether politically, economically, or militarily, Turkey’s relative influence in the broader region will increase. Ankara has already consolidated significant influence in Syria and Azerbaijan, and it continues to pursue strategic connectivity projects across the South Caucasus.
Since Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in 2003, relations have steadily deteriorated. The Hamas victory in a legislative election in Gaza in 2005 felt in Ankara like a personal win for Erdogan, who had advised Hamas on its electoral strategy.
Three years later came the Mavi Marmara incident. A Turkish ship chartered by the Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH) attempted to break Egypt and Israel’s blockade of Gaza. The vessel was boarded by Israeli commandos, resulting in nine deaths. Erdogan accused Israel of “state terrorism” and appealed to the “international community” in a speech to the Turkish parliament. Things kept going downhill and are now worse than ever.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan recently remarked that “the Israeli authorities are a burden that humanity can no longer bear.” Fidan’s words came in a TV interview July 2 following Israel’s recognition of the 1915 Armenian genocide: “Israel is not just Turkey’s problem, nor is it just the issue of our president, he said. “But everyone knows it, feels it, whispers it in hidden corners, and occasionally speaks openly. This is what we must call it.” True, he stepped back from those remarks in a later interview, contending that Turkey and Israel aren’t destined for conflict. Was this second comment perhaps made at Donald Trump’s urging?
After Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, Erdogan emerged as one of Israel’s most outspoken international critics, accusing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government of committing grave violations during the Gaza conflict and intensifying Ankara’s diplomatic support for the Palestinian cause. Israeli officials have interpreted this rhetoric as evidence that Turkey increasingly views itself as a political counterweight to Israel across the region.
Already in December 2023, Erdogan had compared Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler, and Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip to those of the Nazis. In March 2024, he referred to Netanyahu and his government as “modern-day Nazis” and called for bringing these “murderers” to justice under international law.
He subsequently accused Netanyahu of committing “genocide” in Gaza, claimed that his actions “would make Hitler jealous,” and even described the situation in Gaza as “worse than Nazi camps,” while portraying the West as standing aside and enabling the continuation of the “brutality.” In a speech posted on X on March 30 this year, Erdogan called on “Allah” to “damn Zionist Israel.”
The narrative accusing Israel has become a structural component of Turkey’s domestic political discourse. What is new is not the use of extreme imagery and Holocaust terminology, but the role they play. Unlike in the past, the rhetoric is no longer merely an expression of political anger or protest; it has become a component of Turkish policy, intended to lay a normative foundation through which Ankara seeks to deny Israel the moral legitimacy of its actions.
Turkey portrays Israel not as a state confronting a grave security threat from a murderous terrorist organization but as an entity that has crossed the bounds of humanity, committing crimes it equates with those perpetrated by the Nazis. This framing intentionally downplays the severity of Hamas’s actions and prepares the ground for collective action against Israel, including exceptional punitive measures against it. At the same time, it depicts any Western hesitation or lack of restraint regarding Israel as a moral abandonment of Gaza’s residents, expanding responsibility and blame to the international community beyond Israel itself.
On November 7, 2025, the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office announced the issuance of arrest warrants against 37 Israeli figures, including Netanyahu and other senior officials, on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. Although these domestic warrants lack practical enforcement, their significance lies in the ongoing legal threat they create. They limit the movement of senior Israeli officials, discourage other countries and institutions from engaging with Israel, and enhance the criminal framing of Israel in the international arena.
Its identity as a Muslim state and a NATO member, but critical of the liberal-Western order, has allowed Turkey to position itself as a leading moral voice, strengthening its regional and international standing. In addition to the importance the Turkish government attributes to the Palestinian issue and the broad support for the Palestinian position among the Turkish public in general, and Erdogan’s electoral base in particular, this issue serves as a platform for positioning Turkey as a voice challenging the West and speaking on behalf of “the oppressed in the world.”
Erdogan’s tenure has seen a systematic shift toward Islamization within Turkey. His government has expanded religious education, restricted alcohol sales, and promoted conservative social policies. These measures, coupled with the suppression of secular institutions, align with his stated goal of raising a “pious generation.”
Erdogan, from his comments, seems to consider himself the rightful leader of the entire Muslim world. In the interim, he evidently sees himself as the Middle East’s next great power broker, claiming leadership while chaos reigns.
Already entrenched in Syria, steadily expanding an indigenous defence industry capable of producing sophisticated drones, naval vessels, and eventually advanced fighter aircraft, while seeking a foothold in Gaza, Ankara increasingly appears intent on filling the regional vacuum Iran leaves behind. Tehran sought to surround Israel with a Shi’ite ring of fire. Ankara appears willing to create a Sunni one.
Henry Srebrnik is a professor emeritus at the University of Prince Edward Island
Features
Can Deni Avdija lead Portland to the title next year?
It is too early to say if Deni Avdija is ready to lead the Portland Trail Blazers to the NBA Finals in 2027, but it’s not too much to hope for. But the trade to Washington in 2024 is arguably a signature move for Portland. All those who followed him on basketball results on SportyTrader have seen him grow from an all-purpose prospect into an All-Star creator and a testament to the Blazers’ rebuild.
It is not Avdija’s question as to whether he can be a one-man savior. Whether his scoring and playmaking, defense and competitive edge can support a roster that’s become ambitious.
The catalyst: Avdija’s arrival and Portland’s new hope
Deni Avdija was traded to Portland on July 6, 2024, with Washington receiving veteran guard Malcolm Brogdon, the draft rights to No. 14 pick Bub Carrington, a 2029 first-round pick, a 2028 second-round pick, and a 2030 second-round pick in return. The cost seemed to be very high, but the deal with Deni Avdija is becoming more and more justified.
In the 2025-26 campaign, Avdija averaged 24.2 points, 6.9 rebounds and 6.7 assists in 66 games played, and had a shooting percentage of 46.2 percent on the field and 80.2 percent at the free throw line. He has made his first All-Star call-up, his first call-up as an Israeli player. That was a turning point in his career and catapulted him into one of the most prominent Israeli athletes.
One thing that is still being questioned is his perimeter efficiency. He was 36.5 percent on 3-pointers in 2024-25, falling to 31.8 percent with an average of six attempted three-pointers per game. However, his versatility to attack closeouts, get to the ball, rebound, play several positions defensively, and start transition offense means that he is valuable.
What does ‘leading a team’ truly mean for Avdija?
Avdija is not quite in the Nikola Jokic or Giannis Antetokounmpo class; he doesn’t dominate each possession defensively, nor is he a Giannis Antetokounmpo who sets a championship system in motion. He’s becoming a more realistic high-level foundational leader, a part scorer, a part connector and a part tone-setter.
Standards are as necessary as statistics are in Portland. Avdija is aggressive with the ball, physically in it and plays with his heart. Those habits can become the culture on a young team that will ultimately foster contention.
He could still keep on climbing his ladder. The leap from 16.9 and 3.9 assists in 2024-25 to 24.2 and 6.7 indicates that the new found creation is more than just additional minutes. Whether he will grow into an All-Star every year comes down to avoiding turnovers, being able to break from defenders with pull-up shots and providing reliability in the playoffs.
Analyzing his fit with the current Blazers roster
Earlier discussions about what Portland is to look for at Deandre Ayton and Anfernee Simons are now outdated. Then, the 2026-27 bunch now contains Ja Morant, Damian Lillard, Jrue Holiday, Scoot Henderson, Shaedon Sharpe, and Toumani Camara, and Donovan Clingan should be added as well.
That’s opportunity and tension. The combination of Morant’s rim pressure will be a gamebreaker, and if Lillard is able to come back from the Achilles, he can pose defenses a threat with his shooting. Avdija can be used as a backup secondary initiator, attack mismatches and cover a tough defensive task. Camara and Clingan provide volume and bulk following him.
But, ball placement will be key. Morant, Lillard, Henderson and Avdija are all in need of touches. New coach Micah Nori will have to find a way to build an offense that takes advantage of Avdija’s abilities without it becoming a ‘spot-up’ forward.
The reality check: Portland’s long road to contention
There are no signs of a championship next season. Portland reached the playoffs for the first time since 2021, but were eliminated by the San Antonio Spurs in the first round of the Western Conference playoffs, with Victor Wembanyama’s return from a concussion in Game 4 proving decisive in San Antonio’s series win. That’s good, but not good enough to prove that they are champions.
Blazers still have work to do in the scoring, line-up balance, and postseason experience departments, plus clarity on who they’re going to rely on to be their starting closer. Morant is packed with star quality, and some risk. Lillard is 36 and coming back from a major injury. In the younger core, the prospects are good but not certain.
The rebuilds that generally work the way they’re supposed to go, go through a number of phases: asset building, playoff success, series success, then placing a claim on the title. Although Portland is past the beginning stages, one successful season isn’t going to close the gap between the team and the NBA elite.
The verdict: Can Avdija be a champion in Portland?
Avdija likely will not be the man for Portland to win the title next year. But he can also be the invaluable asset to a future contender. With his shot accuracy back at three-point, the turnovers will come down, his decision-making in the playoffs improves, another All-Star season is possible.
He’s a Portland Trail Blazers development litmus test now. Maybe not the only superstar that brings a trophy, but he can be the multi-faceted cornerstone that makes a real title structure possible.
