Why Statistics Are Only Part Of The Equation With The Portland Trail Blazers Bench

Wednesday night in Denver the Portland Trail Blazers put on a show. Not only is it tough to win in Denver, it is nearly impossible to win the fourth game in five nights. With all the chips stacked against them, the Blazers put up near-historic offensive performance on the way to a 130-113 rout of their division foe.

The rest of the night, ESPN’s Sport Center ticker across the button of every screen in America kept saying, “Portland Scores 84 in First Half to Blowout Denver.”

It was a statement heard around the league.

Something bigger than an 84-point half may be coming to fruition in Portland.

A team that came into the season with sky-high expectations has started to look like that team people expected them to be. The offense was never in question. Last year the Blazers were fourth in the league, offensively, with 106.7 points per game. This year, they sit in second, scoring 105.4 points per game.

The two major questions coming into this season was whether their defense was up to the task of defending the high powered offenses of the Western Conference and whether their young bench was going to be able to give them the production they needed to become a true contender.

The defense has risen to the occasion and has shown true improvement so far in this young season. Through 9 games, the Blazers are giving up 97.2 points per game, 10^th best in the league. This is after giving up 102.8 last season, which was 22^nd in the league.

So the next issue with this team… the bench.

There has been a lot of chatter and publicity for the historically awful Blazer bench the past couple seasons. Last year the bench unit was the least used, and lowest scoring bench unit in the entire league. The bench only contributed 23.6 points per game. In 2012-2013, they only averaged 18.5 points per game.

This year, through 9 games they are averaging almost 27 points per game. This improvement may seem incremental, but the statistics don’t tell the whole story.

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Nicolas Batum left the Sunday game with a right knee contusion. The past couple years, injuries were a fatal blow to this incredibly thin team; so when Batum went down, you could hear a groan across Rip City because of the perceived lack of options to fill in at the Small Forward position.

Coach Terry Stotts made an unconventional decision leading up to the Tuesday night game at home and decided to start 2^nd year shooter Allen Crabbe. Stotts addressed the media prior to the game and brushed off the decision by saying that Crabbe was a good defensive matchup for Denver’s Wilson Chandler and that he trusted him on the court.

The key word that all Blazer fans need to take out of the last couple games is, TRUST.

Crabbe not only got the start Tuesday, he was also in the starting lineup on Wednesday. He was not just a placeholder on the court either. Offense ran through Crabbe, he showed great passing abilities, he shot the three ball. Crabbe wasn’t the only one, however, that played big parts in the past couple games.

Late in the Charlotte game on Tuesday Steve Blake and Joel Freeland played key, 4^th quarter minutes. They not only played those minutes, each one of them was instrumental in helping the Blazers come back from a 23-point first half deficit to win the game.

On Wednesday in Denver, the bench really had their chance to shine because of the blow out win. They scored a season high 50 points in Denver. Those minutes were not only huge because they were able to give the starters a break after such a grueling schedule, but the bench players were able to get more quality court time against an NBA opponent. That kind of experience is what sets apart the best benches in the league.

Another bench performer that has been huge is Chris Kaman. Kaman is typically the first guy off the Blazer bench to spell starting center Robin Lopez. Kaman has been incredibly productive off the bench, averaging 10.1 points, 6.8 rebounds, and 1.5 blocks per game. This production at the back-up Center position has been sorely missed for the past couple seasons.

If Coach Stotts is going to continue to rely on and develop this bench unit, the Blazers will be a true contender in the NBA this year. The perspective of having a bench unit contribute to wins on a nightly basis has seemed foreign in Portland the last few years; but is Stotts trusts this bench unit, the sky is the limit.