The Portland Trail Blazers (19-6) sit atop the Northwest Division in the Western Conference with the surging Oklahoma City Thunder (12-13) still seven games back in the race for homecourt advantage come playoff time, but why don’t the Blazers feel like serious contenders?
On paper, the Blazers have quietly put together one of the deepest teams in the Association. (14 players on Portland’s depth chart have registered at least 50 minutes this season. Sorry, Victor Claver.) It’s a team that reminds me of how the Dallas Mavericks finally figured out how to build around Dirk Nowitzki properly right before they went on their historic Finals run that ended in knocking off Miami’s newly formed Big 3. If my first comparison of this team won a championship, and maybe could have won more if that core wasn’t broken up, how can I say the Blazers aren’t for real?
The Blazers currently sit in the top-10 in both offensive and defensive rating, 7th and 5th, respectively. That kind of elite balance usually indicates a serious contender. For arguments sake, the Cleveland Cavaliers sit at 19th with a 106.9 DRtg, and most analysts and pundits consider that team a contender. Maybe it’s just the LeBron Factor, which is a pretty big one. Or maybe it’s just the fact the Cavs’ have a start with previous playoff success? I lean the latter. Still, if the Cavs are a contender than the Blazers are definitely a contender, right?
Maybe it is that simple that for anyone to be considered a serious contender, they need to have previously shown they’re capable of reaching that level? The Houston Rockets you can see as a serious contender because it’s best two players, Dwight Howard and James Harden, have been there. The Memphis Grizzlies have been close and play a style nobody wants to go up against in a 7-game series and the San Antonio Spurs are the Spurs. But what about the Golden State Warriors (21-3)?
The Warriors jumped out to a blazing-hot start, their best player, Steph Curry, is playing out of his mind and is a serious MVP candidate, they upgraded at the head-coach spot and are suddenly a serious contender in the West being 8th in ORtg and 1st in DRtg. Outside of the defensive numbers, 2013-14 Blazers got off to an eerily similar start.
The Blazers, at this exact time a season ago, were 22-4, that included an 11-game winning streak, LaMarcus Aldridge was looking like a serious MVP candidate and Terry Stotts found a starting 5-man unit that just obliterated its competition. They ended up only making it to the second-round of the playoffs before getting bounced by a clearly superior Spurs’ team. But what gives the sizzling 2014-15 Warriors the edge versus the 2013-14 Blazers is the defensive differences.
The Blazers stayed the course coming into this season making minor adjustments to its bench, swapping Mo Williams for Steve Blake, adding Chris Kaman and getting more of their young guys like Allen Crabbe and C.J. McCollum involved more in the rotation. But, more importantly, the starting 5-man unit that lit the league on fire a season ago, is still doing just that; the Lillard-Matthews-Batum-Aldridge-Lopez group has a plus/minus of +87 together this season.
So, the Blazers still have the devastating 5-man unit they had a season ago, their bench is slightly deeper and Stotts has gotten their defense to where it needs to be get past the second-round come playoff time. It still feels like something is missing and that something might be how sparingly Rip City is getting to the charity stripe; the Blazers currently sit at 29th in the League in FTr. (It should be noted that the Spurs were dead-last in this statistic last season.)
Aldridge and Lillard get to the line a healthy amount at roughly four times a night, both shooting over 84 percent, but then you see that Wesley Matthews is shooting seven, yes, seven, threes a night and converting on 38 percent of them. Matthews is third on the team in FGAs per game at 12.4. Can the Blazers really win a championship with Matthews as the third fiddle? That’s where things get tricky.
The last Blazers lottery pick for the foreseeable future, McCollum who was drafted 10th overall in 2013, factors in heavily here. Last season, Matthews being the third guy made sense, McCollum was a rookie and shouldn’t have been counted on, even if he hadn’t been injured, to make a serious impact on a 50-win team with a starting nucleus that gelled so nicely. But this season, the hope for the Blazers had to be that McCollum would start to play well enough where he could challenge Matthews for more minutes at the two spot.
That hasn’t happened due to another injury (broken right index finger) that has sidelined him for most of the start of this season. Before going down, though, the former Lehigh star was shooting 45 percent 3-point land. We knew McCollum could score, he averaged 24 ppg, shot 51 percent from three and got to the line six times a night his final season at Lehigh. McCollum has the ceiling of filling it up from deep as well, or better, than Matthews but his ability to get to penetrate and draw sets him apart from Matthews.
Matthews is also an unrestricted free agent next summer, and it’s very possible the Blazers may not be able to afford one of the league’s best 3-and-D guys. That’s why McCollum’s sophomore campaign is so important for the Portland front office and the team’s chances of making that next leap. If McCollum is still a mystery at the end of this season, the team won’t be able to afford to just let Matthews walk next summer. Especially considering how much chemistry the starting five has, which is another huge trait for serious contenders. Continuity.
With Robin Lopez now sidelined with a broken right hand, Kaman playing OK, Thomas Robinson falling out of the rotation and Meyers Leonard doing whatever it is that Leonard does the Blazers probably need to make a trade before the deadline to shore up their frontcourt and maybe even their backcourt, too. Which leads me to my Robinson, Dorrell Wright (also out of the rotation), Leonard and a second-round pick trade for the Detroit Pistons’ Greg Monroe and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope. (No, seriously it works on Trade Machine.)
I like this move a lot for both teams because it gives the Blazers an offensively-skilled big to back up Aldridge who can also play the four, and the five next to Aldridge, for stretches. It also gives the Blazers a fail-safe key in KCP if they can’t re-sign Matthews next summer.
From the Pistons perspective, they need to move Monroe, and the Jodie Meeks signing made KCP expendable. This solves both of those problems and gives Stan Van Gundy two former lottery pick bigs to work with that need a change of scenery and another shooter on the wing that they sorely need.
Regardless, the Blazers are in a very good position right now with their defense finally catching up to its elite offense. Aldridge and Lillard are still playing at an All-Star level and the starting 5-man unit is still as dominant as ever. Even if they may not feel like a serious contender, everything points to this group fitting that bill.
