After a big win at the expense of the Sacramento Kings, the Portland Trail Blazers continue their homestand before heading out on the road for the final time in the regular season. With no team below them over .500 as of 8:00 Wednesday evening (when I’m typing this), the Blazers are still in the driver’s seat for the sixth seed, and avoidance of the twin Death Stars known as the Golden State Warriors and San Antonio Spurs.
Even after tailing off in March, the Blazers still look like they’ll be in the playoffs for the third straight season, and I don’t rightly know how I feel about that. I’ve been a proponent of tanking, as my buddies here at OSN know well, and to find out that the Blazers are actually too good for a full-on tank job, despite General Manager Neil Olshey losing 80% of his starting lineup and most of the veterans on the bench, makes me feel conflicting emotions.
As a fan, I’m of course glad the Blazers drastically exceeded expectations this season; they were predicted to be among the worst teams in the NBA, and to be the sixth-best team in the West, even a watered-down West, is pretty awesome. Playoff basketball is always great to see, and with the backcourt the Blazers have, featuring a top-25 player in Damian Lillard and the likely Most Improved Player CJ McCollum, they have a chance in almost any game.
As a guy that thinks long-term, I’m not thrilled to see the Blazers in the middle ground of the NBA, where it’s both very hard to contend and very hard to improve your team in a meaningful way, especially in a non-glamour market like Portland. I know Lillard loves it here, and I believe McCollum (his friend) likes Portland too, but trust me when I say NBA players like them are in the vast minority. Besides, both of them were drafted here; they really didn’t have a choice at the beginning of their careers.
Growing up watching the Blazers stuck in constant mediocrity until the Jail Blazer era, which destroyed much of the goodwill this city had towards its only Big Four sports team (sorry, Timbers), wasn’t the most exciting thing in the world. It’s why I consider myself more of a basketball fan than a Trail Blazers fan; seeing Portland get wrecked by the Sonics, Jazz, and Lakers in the first round, year after year, will tend to do that to a kid.
That’s why as great as this year has truly been for the Blazers, a year to be proud of, the young guys had better improve their games after they bow out of this year’s playoffs if they don‘t want several more years of low seeds and first-round ass-kickings. Olshey won’t have his first-round draft pick this year if Portland makes the postseason, and while I expect him to kick the tires in free agency with his ocean of cap space, it’s best to abandon pipe dreams of Al Horford before they take root.
It’ll be an interesting summer for Portland. Happily, it should be devoid of mass defections and roster-gutting. It’s not about rebuilding now in Portland. It’s about growing, and seeing just what Olshey and Co. can add to the garden to make it flourish.
Time for picks! Let’s go!
(Stats provided by NBA.com and basketball-reference.com. All games can be heard on the radio partner of Oregon Sports News, AM 620 Rip City Radio.)
Thursday, March 31: vs. the Boston Celtics, 7:00 PM, CSNNW
The Skinny: The play of the Celtics over the last month has been up-and-down, typical of a good, young team still getting used to the upper echelon of NBA competition. Until recently, these Celtics were sitting at third in the East, but with the hot streak the Atlanta Hawks have been on lately, combined with the Celtics’ uneven efforts, has dropped Boston into the fourth-though-sixth quagmire with the Miami Heat and Charlotte Hornets. Those three teams are separated by a mere half-game in the standings, which means a half-game is literally the difference between having home-court advantage in the first round and playing the streaking Hawks on the road.
How uneven has Boston been? On February 25, the Celtics started a five-game winning streak. After a loss and a win in their next two games after that, they then had a four-game losing streak followed by a four-game winning streak. They lost on the 28th of March to the Clippers.
Both wins and losses are tending to clump together for these Celtics as the season winds down. If they don’t want to have to face going on the road against an experienced team like Miami or Atlanta, with the multitude of young players they have and lacking any real stars, they better hope their fortunes go on the upswing.
As for their viability in the postseason, the C’s stand 13th in offensive rating and fourth in defensive rating. Their defense is really good, but their offense, despite being depicted as slightly above-average, isn’t much to write home about. Their offense basically boils down to over-coaching of marginal talents and Isaiah Thomas making chicken salad out of chicken #$%@ possessions.
If they get Miami or Charlotte with home-court advantage, all bets are off. If the Celtics have to play Games 1 and 2 on the road, and don’t manage to take a game on the road, they’ll likely go down in five.
Player To Watch: Damian Lillard. The mere fact that Thomas was an All-Star in the East this season, while Lillard was left off the Western squad, tells you all you need to know about the point guard landscapes in both conferences. Look for Lillard to make a statement this game despite the airtight defense of Avery Bradley.
Prediction: With that bad habit of losses clumping together for Boston, and with the loss last Monday, I’m going to pick the Blazers to win tonight, and buy themselves a bit of space before tackling the tougher games ahead.
Saturday, April 2: vs. the Miami Heat, 7:00 PM, CSNNW
The Skinny: The misfortunes of Chris Bosh, sidelined once again by life-threatening blood clots (this time in his legs), are difficult to see happen. As Blazer fans know, that same condition claimed the life of Blazers legend Jerome Kersey. I’m glad that doctors caught the clots in Bosh’s lungs and legs before they killed him.
Bosh’s absence in basketball terms is of course secondary to making sure he gets to see his children grow up, but one does have to wonder how this team would look with Bosh there. Would they go from the middle of the Eastern Conference playoff scene to perhaps a fringe contender, a challenger to the Cleveland Cavaliers? The Cavs can be beaten; they are as obscenely talented as they are fraught with drama.
My gut feeling is no, but damn it sure would be fun to see Bosh and Dwyane Wade try to unseat their former teammate LeBron James as kings of the East.
I think Miami is in a similar situation that Portland was in during the latter stages of the Brandon Roy era, with better coaching and slightly more talent in Miami right now. A nine-man rotation of Wade, Goran Dragic, Justice Winslow, Luol Deng, Hassan Whiteside, Gerald Green, Josh McRoberts, the slightly moldering corpse of Joe Johnson, and the rotted remains of Amar’e Stoudemire would be a nice nucleus around Bosh. Without their star power forward, the Heat are merely a dangerous veteran team that is on the decline.
As for ratings, they’re in the same territory as Boston on both offense and defense, but they have more star/near-star players than the Celtics do. Because of that, the Heat would garner more trust and faith in their postseason performance from analysts, though as I said above, all bets are off if the Heat and Celtics meet in the playoffs with home-court favoring Boston.
Player To Watch: CJ McCollum. He’ll be matched up with Dwyane Wade, one of the five best shooting guards in the history of the NBA, and a guy CJ likely watched quite a bit growing up.
Prediction: Miami wins.
Sunday, April 3: @ the Golden State Warriors, 5:00 PM, KGW and NBATV (Note: if you live in the Oregon/SW Washington area, NBATV will black the game out.)
The Skinny: I think I’ve said enough about the Warriors this year. If you want more insight, I have no more to give. They’re historically great, perhaps the best single-season team in NBA history, and they probably still haven’t forgotten, or forgiven, the blowout Portland gave them after the All-Star break, which still stands as the worst of the seven losses the Warriors have taken all season.
Two more things to point out, then: One, this is incredibly poor timing for the Blazers, to be playing a team chasing history on the road. The Warriors haven’t taken a loss at their home arena in 13 months.
Also…I’ll probably just skip watching this game, despite it being available for free on KGW, to watch WrestleMania 32. Despite the sad state of the Mania card this year.
Player To Watch: Damian Lillard. Dame/Stephen Curry, Round Four. Fight!
Prediction: The only question is if Golden State will destroy Portland by 20, 30, or 40. I’ll guess 30.
On Monday, I’ll preview all the remaining games for the Trail Blazers in the regular season. If they make the playoffs, breakdowns of their first-round series will be available on Oregon Sports News!
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