After a week off for Turkey Day and family time, everyone’s favorite Portland Trail BlazersThe series they didn’t know existed is back! That’s right, although a day later than we usually like here, it’s time for a week in Rip City.
This week we’ll discuss the tough-to-beat Trail Blazers, the long-awaited love for Jerami Grant, and the tough decisions coming at Drexler Drive shortly after the new year. Of course, there will be other trinkets and tricks as well. In honor of the start of December, and in an effort to cash in on that sweet SEO sugar, this week’s intro music will be provided by Taylor Swift. Take it off, Tay!
Record of the week: 2 wins, 2 losses – 108-102 loss to the Bucks on Sunday; 114-110 victory against the Pacers on Monday; 103-95 victory at the Cavaliers on Thursday; 118-113 overtime defeat against Jazz on Saturday
1. The Trail Blazers are a tough pacer
If the Trail Blazers established – or rather continued – a trend last week, it was the fact that they are a tough opponent to beat when everyone is healthy. Portland plays hard enough on defense and deploys enough talent that opponents can’t just come in and walk away with a win; they will have to earn it.
After the Pacers game, Indiana head coach Rick Carlisle showed a lot of respect for the way Portland competed, pointing out that it was no fluke that the Trail Blazers won.
Here is Carlisle:
They played a game yesterday in Milwaukee that they should have won, and they came here with some determination, and we just weren’t up to the task, we didn’t compete well enough, so (it’s disappointing. They have some really good players on this team – when you talk about Ayton, Brogdon and Grant who had 34 (points) and Sharpe who is having a great year. They have a group of role players who play hard and have a defensive mindset. They deserved it. We didn’t give it to them. They deserved it.
The praise, from an opposing coach as respected as Carlisle, reinforced what many of us who watch the Trail Blazers closely already knew. Portland trails teams because of their persistence on defense and their intensity. Six games into the season, I wrote about defense in this series because Portland had favorable stats, including a ninth-best defensive rating of 108.4. But it was early and the team had played three weak attacks in a row; many wondered if this level of play was sustainable. Well, 13 games later, things are holding up. The defensive rating has increased slightly, but Portland is still stuck with a 10th-best rating of 112.1. To prove this point in one more, satisfying, sequential way: Portland is #3 in steals per game, #2 in opponent 3-point percentage, and #1 in forced turnovers per game. Points in the paint are still a big problem — the third-worst NBA-type problem — but Portland is whittling down its teams.
The Pacers have the best offense in the NBA with 128.2 points per game. Portland held Tyrese Haliburton and Co. to 110 points on the second night of a row.
Despite Carlisle’s awareness of Portland’s stubbornness and ours, it seems many observers of the league scoreboard haven’t yet figured it out. My friend, a die-hard Pacers fan, told me that Pacers Twitter suffered a melodramatic meltdown after the loss. After the Cavs won, I came across the Locked on Cavs podcast and listened to one of the hosts have a character crisis as he lamented the loss as a Cleveland player. worse of the season. The reactions are funny and ill-advised. Except for one forgettable, embarrassing, horrible After a 43-point loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder, the Trail Blazers have been competitive in almost every other game this season, even in double-digit losses.
Portland is closer to the .500 mix posted this week, rather than the eight-game losing streak the team endured when Malcolm Brogdon and Scoot Henderson missed parts of the games. Losing to Portland shouldn’t send opposing fans into a dark, desperate spiral of midnight introspection. Like Carlisle said, Portland’s veterans are good and the role players take care of it. Sprinkle some Duop Reath 3s and Matisse Thybulle flies into the mix, and the Trail Blazers might just leave your town with a W.
2. Praise for the late Jerami grant
As I was thinking about possible section ideas for this week, I noticed that I haven’t yet mentioned Jerami Grant’s big game so far this season. It’s not that I haven’t noticed Grant or don’t like his game; I simply expected Grant to play well, whereas I found the developments involving Shaedon Sharpe, Deandre Ayton and Scoot Henderson much more compelling. But I decided I couldn’t go on without mentioning the veteran forward’s contributions, so I established Saturday afternoon that Grant would receive his flowers.
Then, two hours later, Grant played his worst game of the season before leaving early in the fourth quarter with a head injury. It’s not the right time. However, this series is called “A Week in Rip City”, not “A Day Rip City,” and I’m not leaving mid-December without discussing Grant. So we move on to the offering of flowers without letting ourselves be discouraged!
Grant has arguably been Portland’s best player this season. He kept Portland’s latest offense from completely derailing with his ability to make 3s and generate buckets in isolation. As my Australian colleague and only friend Adrian Bernecich explained in Adrian’s Angles on SaturdaYes, Grant’s numbers this season are around All-Star level: 22.1 points (a career high), 3.8 rebounds, 2.2 assists and 0.8 blocks, while shooting 41.2 % in 3 s.
Monday against the Pacers was Grant’s best performance of the season and the perfect example of how he has carried this team for extended stretches. Grant scored 34 points on 12-of-18 shooting, including 17 points in the decisive fourth quarter. It was an emphatic display of shooting, or as Carlisle puts it: “hellish.”
But beyond the shooting, I was perhaps more impressed by Grant’s buy-in and effort. Grant received his big payday in July, securing a lucrative long-term contract. He is a veteran of a rebuilding team that is far, far away from the competition. Yet he doesn’t just make moves until a rally wins; Grant carried a heavy load for this team and did it admirably. His playing time decreased slightly to 35 minutes per game, 25th in the NBA. However, a few weeks ago, when Portland was dealing with so many injuries, Grant was in the NBA’s top five with Shaedon Sharpe.
Grant likes his mid-range jumpers, but he has consistently attacked the rim hard this season and has taken some tough hits in the process. And I can’t imagine Portland’s defense would make these positive strides if Grant wasn’t playing his role. Yes, Grant is not a great rebounder, and sometimes the ball stops in his hands unsightly, but he is a good rebounder. GOOD player. I hope he can recover quickly.
3. Drexler Driving Decisions
The above sections serve as a nice lead-in to our third section of the day: Portland’s looming decision on what to do with Grant and fellow forward Malcolm Brogdon at the February press conference. NBA trade deadline. The Trail Blazers’ competitive, “tough” identity would likely melt away quickly in the second half of the season if Portland deals out the veterans, but the common rebuilding strategy likely says trading one or both of them. Their high level of performance should also increase their stock in the commercial market. I’m not trying to rain on the parade by bringing up trade talk, but it’s an interesting and important storyline to follow as the season progresses.
If you want to explore this topic further, I explored it in detail yesterday in an article that you can read here. There’s also a lot of interesting debate and viewpoints from Blazer’s Edge readers in the comments below this article. I was a little shocked to see the divergence of opinions.
Advice :
Scoot Steps: To be very brief, the rookie point guard made great strides last week.
Highlight of the week: Duh…
Best thing I saw this week: I saw this a few weeks ago, but with the holiday season starting up, I have to show some love to Earth Duop (W)!!
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