Basketball Can Be Fun
Saturday night felt foreign. Because it was fun on both ends.
I honestly forgot what it felt like. What it felt like to have that much fun. What it felt like to be among a real crowd. What it felt like to see second and third efforts on defense and fast-breaking basketball. Part of me had never associated such attributes with Blazers basketball because, for most of my life, those things had not been synonymous with Blazers basketball.
It always had to be one or the other, at least in my days. Fast breaking has mostly been dormant since the Drexler-Porter years and of course, the Walton days. The McMillan teams were bogged down in terms of pace while executing their offense well. Stotts’ teams were great and dynamic offensively, especially in the halfcourt, but were rarely an exciting transition team and of course, only in a couple of seasons, were they an average defensive team.
Saturday night was only one game but it gave us a glimpse at the tantalizing option seemingly always out of reach for the Blazers in the new millennium: why not both?
From the very beginning of the game, Portland’s effort with swarming to the ball and helping each other was very noticeable. While I wasn’t at the first game, the effort was noticeable from media row immediately and a cross-check with those who were in attendance on night 1 confirmed it early: Portland’s defensive effort was better than the opener.
The players who spoke on Saturday night–CJ McCollum, Anfernee Simons, and Nassir Little–owed the improvement to playing smarter on the defensive end.
The coaching staff’s approach in practice clearly made an impression. But Billups believed the Blazers were the beneficiaries of effort more than they were of execution. During their great second quarter, they disrupted multiple attempts to throw lobs by Phoenix. According to Billups, Portland’s disruption of Phoenix’s lobs to centers DeAndre Ayton and JaVale McGee wasn’t the product of perfectly executed coverage, but rather the effort that can help erase mistakes in execution.
“That particular defense we were playing, there should always be a low man there. A lot of times, they got some lobs and layups there, which happens,” Billups said. “We messed up that coverage but we were playing so hard, and this is what we were telling our guys, when you’re playing so hard you can mess up some coverages. Multiple efforts cover up for some of those things. I thought tonight we did that. Sometimes we did it right, sometimes we didn’t. But our effort, as hard as we played, helped us.”
The effort and execution on defense led to stops, which led to run-outs and transition opportunities. And the Blazers finished them! Dame didn’t play in the 4th. It was everything the Blazers have been selling to us as the potential for this team. Sure the Suns were on a back-to-back after smacking the Lakers on national television, but it’s fun to know this team can win this way against a team of Phoenix’s caliber. And do it the way they did.
It’s only one game and there will be more stumbles. 82 games are designed for stumbles. But it felt good to have fun again. Thanks to a pandemic season and Olshey putting a not-so-subtle call on Stotts’ head in the media all last season, the last few years have missed that. Even for a night, it was good to have it back. I hope you had fun too.