I like to think I’m a tolerant person. Though Portland isn’t nationally known as a beacon of diversity, growing up poor in Northeast Portland exposes you to many different people: immigrants and refugees from Vietnam, the dissolved Soviet Union when I was a child, war-torn nations in central Africa, and from many countries in Latin America. I made friends with kids of all colors, both genders, and many different religious persuasions.
Later on in life, I also made friends in the LGBT community, and though I myself am straight, the idea of homosexuality isn’t an uncomfortable, disgusting, or otherwise negative one for me like it is for shallower, more narrow-minded people.
I don’t care what color you are, where you’re from, or whom you choose to sleep with; people fall somewhere between being jerks and saints, and those things tend to have superficial influence on whether a person is closer to a jerk or a saint, if they have any influence at all.
One of the few things that does get my goat, however, are people who ignore things I think are plainly obvious. One of those things is just who’s been playing in the NBA Finals the last few years, and the trends that have cropped up.
As the Golden State Warriors finished off LeBron James and the Jabroni Parade (AKA the Cleveland Cavaliers), I wish to point out that all the title contenders of the past five years have one of two things in common. Either their best players had been together a minimum of two years, and their individual games meshed perfectly on the court (like the San Antonio Spurs, or this year’s Warriors), or they had the good fortune to employ LeBron James, the best basketball player on the planet.
Those are the two paths to winning an NBA title today. Teams also have to be well-coached, have great luck with health, have the fortitude to slog through a long playoff run after a grueling 82-game season, and be playing their best basketball in the games, quarters, and minutes that matter the most.
In the case of the Portland Trail Blazers, whenever I’ve read a column or opinion that mentions the team needs to deconstruct their starting lineup of Damian Lillard, Wesley Matthews, Nicolas Batum, LaMarcus Aldridge, and Robin Lopez in order to get closer to an NBA title, I’ve wanted to slap that person.
In 2014-15, that lineup played 629 minutes together, the fourth-most in the league per NBA.com. Among five-man lineups that logged at least 300 minutes together, our Blazer starting five was sixth in net rating, seventh in defensive rating, and tenth in offensive rating. Their net rating was 10.7; that means that when those five guys were on the court together, they were 10.7 points better than their opposition. They rated favorably with the starters of the best teams in the NBA. Sad that they only had 32 games together, thanks to injuries.
In 2013-14, they were even better, playing a remarkable 1,373 minutes together, good for second in the NBA that year. While that number will never be repeated, the fact that they were able to record a net rating of 8.5, a rating that was eighth in the league that year despite the ungodly load of minutes they had to play, was nothing short of extraordinary.
In that lineup, Aldridge had his best years, averaging 22 and 11 while Lopez did the dirty work and had his back. It’s no accident that Aldridge had his greatest individual success playing alongside Lopez, despite the perceived lack of offensive punch Lopez brings to the table.
This year, Portland was eighth in offensive rating as a team, above the Houston Rockets (who are the self-proclaimed paragons of efficiency, and led by James Harden, who shoots threes, layups, and free throws almost exclusively), above the New Orleans Pelicans (who employ the man who’s the heir apparent to LeBron’s title of best player, Anthony Davis), and mere decimal points behind the Atlanta Hawks and San Antonio, who are to NBA offense like Picasso is to painting, or Michelangelo is to sculpting.
The offense did just fine with Lopez on the team, to be clear. It will continue to do fine.
Lillard and Matthews also played off each other in a perimeter version of the Aldridge-Lopez symbiosis. Lillard’s ability to create off the dribble and in the pick-and-roll, Matthews’ dogged defense, and their shared ability of deadly outside shooting (other than the Splash Brothers in Golden State, Lillard and Matthews are the most prolific shooting backcourt of the last two seasons) made for an ideal pairing of point guard and wing player.
The criticism of Lillard’s defense, while slightly short-sighted, is also accurate. (Point guard defense is the hardest thing for a young player, of any position, to learn. Whether that player‘s a point guard himself, a wing player defending on the ball, or a big man switching off of the pick-and-roll, defending a good point guard is really damned difficult. Lillard, bless his heart, is living proof of both the positive offensive impact and the negative defensive impact a point guard has on his team.)
He must get better, especially in light of Matthews’ Achilles injury. Matthews likely will have lost a step, and Lillard will have to check the Stephen Currys and Kyrie Irvings of the world more often.
By the way, even after the injury, I still think Matthews is worth bringing back. Two factors go into this line of thinking: the desire of maintaining that valuable continuity and the sobering fact that there won’t be any 3-and-D wing player that could compare to Matthews, and is willing to replace a beloved member of Rip City.
The fifth man in this equation, Batum, is the proverbial glue guy. While the general opinion about Batum seems to be that he needs to do more, he fits very well both in terms of role and personality. He is a walking Swiss Army Knife, able to transform into an initiator of offense, the point man on defense/defensive stopper, a three-point bomber, a savage rebounder, or a highlight-seeking menace in transition. All depending on what coach Terry Stotts needs of him.
Batum was often the guy left in along with Aldridge with the reserves because of that adaptability. He had an awful season in 2014-15, but hopefully with a summer of rest, and a real chance to get his personal affairs in order, he comes back to Portland recharged and ready to be the 15-5-5 guy he aspires to be.
To sum up: the starting lineup is not the problem. The Blazers struggled last year when their starters got injured, starting with Lopez’s broken hand and ending with the Achilles rupture that killed Portland’s year. To blame the inability of the Blazers to win it all on a perceived flaw among the starting lineup, while ignoring the facts that the Blazers have had success in a historically stacked and brutal Western Conference, have started a young pup at the league’s most important position, and have HAD ALMOST NO BENCH for two years, is asinine and short-sighted. It’s not the type of thinking one would expect form a legion of fans as basketball-savvy as the Portland Trail Blazers’.
Portland is not a free agent destination, and never has been. Those that think the Blazers can just flush a team down the tubes and get a new cast of characters, like the Miami Heat or Los Angeles Lakers, is not thinking like an NBA player.
The problems the Blazers had the last two years have centered on perhaps the worst bench in the NBA. In 2013-14, they basically had just Mo Williams and that was it. The main reason the Spurs rolled them that year was that the Blazers were a six-man team playing a 12-man team.
Last year, they let Mo walk and replaced him with Steve Blake and Chris Kaman. Blake faded as the year went on, but Kaman proved to be a capable, though banged-up, reserve. Air Sasquatch had to play more minutes when Lopez got hurt, and the increased workload took its toll. By the time CJ McCollum and Meyers Leonard were healthy and ready to take bigger roles in the rotation, Blake and Kaman had been run into the ground.
I doubt everyone of significance comes back from last year’s roster; hell, Olshey can even blow the whole thing up by letting everybody walk, trade Batum for a pick and players he can waive with little cost, draft Sam Dekker or Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, punt the upcoming season, and start again.
My preference, however, is seeing the majority of the band come back together again, given the success the starting lineup has had. If Olshey can bring in another capable veteran or two, and McCollum and Leonard build on their development, suddenly the Blazers can sport a versatile nine or 10-man rotation, similar to the Spurs, Warriors, 2011 Dallas Mavericks, or even conference finalists like the Oklahoma City Thunder or Atlanta.
The two sure paths to the NBA championship in this modern league are to either employ the best player in the league, or field a roster that knows each other like the backs of their hands. Either way, the educated fan must hope that things break the right way for his team. Stay healthy, find the right mix of fortitude, intensity, and calm, and go out there and see what your team can do.
Since the Blazers aren’t signing LeBron James anytime soon, to me the path to success remains clear. Keep the core together, bring in a veteran or two via trade or free-agency, hope the young guys develop the right way, and hope nobody else blows out an Achilles.
The San Antonio Spurs built a championship team in Tim Duncan’s old age because of continuity. The Golden State Warriors will soon hoist their first NBA title in 40 years not because Steph Curry is awesome, but because they have 12 players that know each other very well, they can switch on defense with impunity, and they have a roster of tools that never lets them go into a game unprepared. They don’t have a bad matchup.
It might take the Portland Trail Blazers another year or two to acquire that kind of roster, by getting lucky through the draft (like the Warriors did with Harrison Barnes and especially Draymond Green), by making savvy trades and under-the-radar signings.
For a team like the Blazers, in a market that’s not appealing to the majority of young, rich, African-American basketball players, the only real scenarios to eventual success are to either get everybody back together, or if the most important players walk, tear the team down to the studs and try again. As for me, I’m tired of rebuilding.
I want to see where the force of continuity can take this team.
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