Blazers get caught in the waiting game
Only one team looked like the trade deadline was on their minds
A poor start kicked off a game script that has been all too familiar for the Portland Trail Blazers in Saturday night’s wire-to-wire loss to the Toronto Raptors. The Raptors never trailed, taking out their anger from a close loss the previous night at Golden State in a productive fashion.
And as we sit with the NBA Trade Deadline roughly 11 days away, the effects of the waiting game are undoubtedly creeping into every NBA locker room. Saturday night’s game in Portland featured two of the most frequently mentioned teams regarding the Feb. 9 deadline, but the Raptors were the more motivated team to win a game rather than let the waiting game get to them. That the executives for both teams were chatting with each other before the game only added to the intrigue. But only one team seemed to have the urgency to get the job done. Only one team was able to put their worries to the side and handle the task at hand. Urgency is the word Damian Lillard kept coming back to in his postgame comments, something the Raptors had a lot more of after a hard-fought loss in Golden State the night before.
The Raptors may have a disappointing record after earning a top-six playoff seed last season, but they showed a type of demeanor in the face of adversity the Blazers could admire. What the Raptors do have, despite a disappointing record, is an identity, built on disruptive defense, hustle, and athleticism thanks to a coach who has burnished his brand of basketball on this group.
And the question of identity brings me back to something I’ve been vocal about lately on social media. I’ve been critical of Chauncey Billups for sticking to Josh Hart late in games, or even as a starter going forward after Nassir Little has shown great play off the bench. And while Little struggled early and played better as the game went on, I’m starting to see Billups’ willingness to stick with Hart as something beyond just his trust in a player.
Sure, his trust in Hart is borne out of how he earned a starting role in training camp, but it also feels as though it’s also Billups trying to will his team into a greater identity. Something that Blazers Basketball stands for. And outside of Dame’s ability to go ballistic, Billups is still searching. Dame will always galvanize and lead, but there are only so many things he can teach a group which much is expected for the first time in their NBA careers. At least with Hart and the mercurial Nurkic in the lineup next to Lillard, Simons, and Grant, they’ve been through the fire enough to know what it’s like to get burned. Outside of that, there are a lot of fingers with a lack of heat tolerance.
No matter how many times Dame says he’s looked back at the schedule over his career and thought “man, we could have had that one,” he can’t make the rest of the team know how that feels. No matter how many times Chauncey Billups or Scott Brooks tells Little about Pascal Siakam getting to his spin move, he won’t know how it feels to lose on the block until he loses him. And while I’ve had my issues with Hart’s decision-making on the offensive end, Billups doesn’t have to school him three minutes into the game on how to get the right position.
It’s not simply what Hart’s minutes are, but what he signifies to Billups, is what stood out to me tonight with Little and Eubanks replacing Hart and Nurkic in the starting lineup. Even with those two veterans, the Blazers are still figuring out who they are. And the closest thing they had to an identity, their starting lineup, is in serious jeopardy of never seeing the floor again with the deadline approaching and Hart being reported, both locally and nationally, as one of the hottest names on the trade market.
Little comfort as it is after a 10-4 start that started with so much excitement, this is who Joe Cronin said this team was heading into the season. And as much as we are waiting for the next shoe to drop (I think I did about 20 fake trades this week), Cronin is definitely perusing the boots on the market. And likely will be until the deadline arrives, as every team scrambles to get their test done in time, a metaphor Nick Nurse used on Saturday night in relation to how business usually goes down around the trade deadline.
So my advice for you, the reader, as well as myself, is: don’t get caught up waiting for the shoe to drop. Going about your business, as we saw tonight, is probably easier than it is for the guys on the team right now. But as we saw tonight, if you let it, the waiting game will leave you flatfooted.
Notes
I was back in the saddle for the Associated Press tonight for the first time in a few weeks. I went to the Orlando game as a civilian, because I have an unhealthy obsession with the Magic thanks to betting on their season over. Read my Raptors-centric recap for the AP: spoiler, we lead stories about the winners.
The Blazers “won” a challenge that they actually lost late in the third quarter of Saturday’s game. Chauncey Billups challenged a blocking foul called on Trendon Watford when guarding Pascal Siakam, which the Blazers won, overturning the foul on Watford. However, while the foul on Watford was removed, the referees assigned a foul to Jerami Grant against Siakam on his way up. So, Siakam got two shots even though the call was “overturned.”
After the game, I was curious if that had ever happened in a game Lillard had played in, so I asked him. While Lillard was diplomatic as always, he did bring up a question about reviews that seems to be interpreted differently by every individual referee. “I feel like it’s happened before. But in that situation, they called a block and we challenged it to see if it was a block or a charge and they called a foul on something that was off the attack. It seems like…What did you call? What did we challenge? They should be specific about that. We didn’t challenge the play, I’m sure there was a foul that happened before even the one that y’all looked back and saw. But the play was, you called a blocking foul and we challenged it saying it was a charge. So, I don’t think it’s the first time I’ve seen it but I’m confused by it. You go and find some contact to justify the call, not what the call was.”
Eric Koreen, the Raptors writer from The Athletic, assured me after the game that a similar call had gone against the Raptors earlier this season. Still, the challenge process, young as it is in the NBA, has some kinks to work out.