Is It Time To Panic In Rip City?

After sustaining consecutive double-digit losses, the Portland Trail Blazers are being confronted with a kind of adversity they’ve yet to deal with this season. You can excuse the 15 point drubbing at the hands of Golden State as a case of tired legs for Portland, as they had just played, and beaten, Minnesota the night prior at the Moda Center. The 17 point loss, two nights later, to Memphis, however? Not nearly as excusable, and could be a cause for concern for a team who was the best story in the NBA for the first half of the season.

Heading in to the New Year, Portland was 25-7, was coming off a huge win at rival Oklahoma City on New Years Eve, and was the talk of the NBA; they had a potential MVP candidate posting career numbers, and was witnessing Damian Lillard’s ascension to superstardom.

But my, what a month can do to bring a team back down from Cloud 9.

Aldridge has still been putting up his MVP-like numbers, and Damian is still a budding superstar, but Portland just endured it’s worst month of the season, capped off by two ugly, double-digit, losses.

While it’s not a death wish for Portland, nor is it a curtain call on their season, the defensive woes, and inevitable cooling of from 3-point land, have certainly assisted in Portland’s recent struggles.

Wes Matthews wasn’t going to shoot 48% from beyond the arc all year, and although Lillard could still very well get back to leading the league in treys, his drop off in production was bound to happen; it’s just the fact that this is all happening at once that has really doomed the Blazers.

The fault can’t be placed squarely on just Wes, or Damian, it’s a series of full team adjustments that will help right the ship. The bench, albeit much better than last year’s B squad, has under played as of late, Nic Batum is battling a broken finger that has brought his scoring down, and the team defense has been downright awful.

Sitting at 27^th in the league, as far as points allowed per game are concerned, Portland is giving up 103.4 points per contest, in front of only the 15 win Sacramento Kings, the 16 win Kobe-less Lakers, and the 14 win Philadelphia 76ers.

With a point differential of +5 (Portland is scoring a league best 108.4 points per game) they were getting past teams by just simply scoring more than their opponents. They could afford to give up, say, 111 points to the Dallas Mavericks on January 18th, because they were able to score 127; defense wasn’t an issue if they could stay out in front. However, it’s starting to be a crippling issue, and the main culprit for why Portland has lost 4, of it’s last 6, games.

So will it be as easy (and as John Madden-like) as just saying that Portland needs to get back to scoring more than their opponent? Or are the defensive woes something that will burn them come playoff time?

With a much needed break coming in two weeks for the NBA All-Star Weekend, Portland will have an opportunity to rest it’s tired legs, and figure out how they can stop making the other team’s scorers look like Michael Jordan on a nightly basis.

While it is much better for this team to face these kinds of troubles during the season, than in the first round of the playoffs, it’s unknown how Portland will respond to this kind of adversity.

In my opinion, however, one thing should be clear: it’s nowhere near the time to push the panic button in Portland.