An opening night win against an injury depleted Oklahoma City Thunder team was expected. What wasn’t expected was consecutive losses to the Sacramento Kings on the road and the Golden State Warriors at home.
After the 1-2 start, some fans and detractors had their knee-jerk reactions thinking this team had somehow lost their mojo during the off-season.
Then, as people started to doubt this team that won 54 games last year, they beat a couple of the best teams in the league, the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Dallas Mavericks in convincing fashion.
On Tuesday, King James and the reincarnation of the Big Three came into the Moda Center with a 1-1 record and a lot of people questioning them as well. James had one of the worst games of his career as the Blazers held him to only 11 points and beat the Cavs by 19.
Thursday night, the reinvigorated Dallas Mavericks came to town as one of the hottest teams in the league, winning 3 games in a row. Not only did they get deeper during the off-season, they got far more explosively offensively. The Blazers not only won the game, they won it in convincing fashion, 108-87.
Although this team is far from perfect, they have proven that this team will be every bit as competitive as they were last year when they won 54 games.
Particularly in the Mavericks game there were a lot of things that need to be improved.
The Blazers had 17 turnovers and only forced Dallas to commit 7 turnovers. Coming into the game, the Mavericks seemed to be able to get any shot they wanted to and they were able to control the tempo.
Nicolas Batum didn’t hit his first field goal of the game until the 3rd quarter. He had an all-around good game with 8 points, 9 rebounds, and 9 assists. A near-triple-double is what Batum can offer but he needs to be far more aggressive on the offensive end of the court for the Blazers to establish the offensive rhythm they want.
Thursday night showed everyone that the Blazers’ bench may actually be a factor this year. Coming into the game the bench was averaging 17.5 points per game, but scored 42 points Thursday night against the Mavericks. This may be a little misleading as a lot of the bench was able to log heavy minutes in the 4th quarter when the game was out of hand.
If the bench can continue to come together as a group and contribute, this team will be scary moving forward. But one game of brilliant bench performance can be an anomaly.
The good news for the Blazers, after their matchup on Saturday against the Los Angeles Clippers, the Blazers have 5 straight games against teams with records at-or-below .500 (8 out of the next 9 are at-or-below .500 as well). With this favorable schedule, with a lot of games in the friendly confines of the Moda Center, the Blazers can really get a streak going.
I expect the momentum of this team to continue to improve. If they can take advantage of this softening schedule, limit turnovers, and continue to build the bench, the Blazers could establish themselves as the leader in the Northwest Division and one of the top teams in the Western Conference.
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