Portland’s one major professional sports team has blazed quite a trail this season.
On November 8, when this 82-game journey was just getting started, the Blazers surrendered a 24-0 run to the Detroit Pistons at home in the fourth quarter. After an offseason in which LaMarcus Aldridge and Nicolas Batum left, it was easy — and not unreasonable in the slightest — to think the Blazers would have to endure at least one season in the NBA Draft Lottery.
Surely the Houston Rockets — Western Conference runners-up — would make the playoffs, right? In all probability, the New Orleans Pelicans and Anthony Davis would return to the postseason, though perhaps not with a substantially improved seed.
That loss to Detroit — and not too much later, a loss at Houston in which the Blazers blew a 15-point fourth-quarter lead — seemed to point to a season littered with frustrations and failures. To put a finer point on it, the nights when the Blazers fell short were likely to eclipse any successes head coach Terry Stotts cobbled together.
Look where the Blazers are now.
Not only did they beat the Boston Celtics on Thursday night, 116-109, they did so on a night when Damian Lillard went 3-for-16 from the field and scored 11 fewer points (14) than his season average. The idea that the Blazers would be tough and versatile enough to beat a well-coached playoff team this late in the season on an off night from Dame is not that mind-blowing within the context of what Portland has become over the past five months. However, if contemplated before this season began, the notion would have seemed preposterous.
Terry Stotts might not be Brad Stevens, who offers every appearance of being the NBA’s next truly great coach, but Portland’s prime provider of perspective from his place on the pine has quietly done the best coaching job in the West this side of Kerr and Pop. Portland is so much more than the Damian Lillard show, and it proved why against a Celtics team which welcomed Jae Crowder back to the lineup. In the process, Portland kept up the pressure on Memphis in its push for the 5 seed, which would mean a date with the Los Angeles Clippers, not the Oklahoma City Thunder, in the first round of the Western Conference playoffs.
Guess what seed Portland attained last year in the West? Yeah, a 5 seed.
The idea that this team could match last season’s group in terms of playoff seeding is beyond belief. Yet, here are the Blazers, following the rugged portion of the Oregon Trail and “roughing it” with skill and aplomb.
Boston — like Portland, an overachieving team — got a double-double from Crowder in his return to the lineup, and made things difficult for Portland all night long. Even after a scoring surge lifted the Blazers to a five-point lead in the game’s latter stages, the Celtics wouldn’t go away. The ol’ “made free throw, missed second free throw, offensive rebound, 3-point make” four-point play applied game pressure to the Blazers:
IT for 3! We've got ourselves a game in Portland! https://t.co/RrqgEdN1A8
— Boston Celtics (@celtics) April 1, 2016
Boston used that play and — moments later — a Crowder corner three off a blocked shot retrieval to take a 109-108 lead with little more than a minute left.
Portland could have relented, especially with Dame not feeling it from the field.
However, these Blazers are not to be underestimated.
C.J. McCollum knocked down a mid-range shot, and a few seconds later, this sequence unfolded:
HIGHLIGHT Crabbe steal, Blazers transition, Aminu dunk #RipCity #CSNBlazers https://t.co/xyTIhw5l6h
— NBC Sports Northwest (@NBCSNorthwest) April 1, 2016
What Allen Crabbe started, Aminu — a 10-points-per-game player who scored 28 on Thursday — finished with authority.
Aminu finished not just the dunk and the fast break, but the game. The Celtics didn’t score another point in the final minute after taking that 109-108 lead. Portland’s fight for the 5 seed is still alive, and Boston lost ground in the attempt to get a home-court seed (3 or 4) in the first round of the East playoffs.
What you saw on Thursday night is, in many ways, the full measure of the ripened, layered, more mature Portland Blazers, who have walked the Trail with persistence and passion this season. The Trail Blazers’ ability to shrug off several bitter defeats — think of the blown 72-51 third-quarter lead against Houston just after the All-Star break — has given them not only a safe playoff spot, but a real chance to threaten OKC or the Clips in round one.
So much like Charlotte in the East, Portland is a mid-level seed in the West which might not win a playoff series this year… and yet will rightly be seen as one of the foremost overachievers in the league.
The Oregon Ducks making the Elite Eight and gaining the school’s first-ever No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament have given Beaver State basketball fans one unexpected treat this year.
The Portland Trail Blazers’ body of work this season is no less surprising — or pleasing — to Oregonians who have had a lot to cheer about on the hardwood in 2016.
