Can Portland's bigs play a full game again?
LeBron James dominated but Portland's stars answered, their supporting players, particularly inside, failed to deliver
Earlier this week, before the series had started, I went on 1080 The Fan’s Dirt and Sprague where I was asked who I believed was the player to watch in this series for the Portland Trail Blazers. And as I indexed through my memories of watching Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum win game after game over the years, it became as clear as day. The axis of this series for Portland is and still remains Jusuf Nurkić, particularly whether he could turn the Lakers' defense against themselves and also limit their incredible rebounding ability. With 10 points and more than a few flailing floaters, the questions about whether he could do what the Blazers envisioned for him were only natural to surface again.
The other question, of course, was could he guard Anthony Davis better than he did in 2018. In the 4th quarter of Game 3, Davis was taking rhythm jumpers just like he did in a Pelicans jersey as Nurk let him step into everything without challenging his dribble and then Portland’s switch of Davis is even less enthusiastic than the first challenge of his jumper.
Say what you will about the officiating, but it’s something out of Portland’s control. The only thing they can do is try to do better with keeping their hands up and to the side. Hell, maybe take a page from LeBron’s book not even just last year and dare the refs to call a foul on you when you have your hands behind your back.
All jokes aside about the whistle on the Lakers tonight, the Blazers ended a game in which they won the rebounding battle in the 1st quarter, by losing it over the course of the game by 17, by far the widest margin in the series. Mario Hezonja continues to give the Blazers negative production and while Anfernee Simons had some nice activity on defense, he failed to make the Lakers pay for leaving him wide open several times throughout his 14 minutes on Saturday night. Portland’s options as role players have dwindled greatly, which showed even more on Saturday.
Lillard had 34 and McCollum showed no problem working his way around the Lakers defense. Even Carmelo Anthony carried the team in the 3rd quarter with 13 of his 20 points, answering a second-half onslaught from LeBron. The Lakers also had a massive 43-19 free-throw advantage, which cannot be ignored in the game’s postmortem.
But all that being said, Portland needs more from Nurkić. Damian Lillard protects him like a big brother and said that they are asking a lot of Nurk. But Carmelo Anthony said his own piece about Nurk, noting that the Blazers are asking a lot from everybody. To add on my own addendum to Melo’s statement, it’s the fucking playoffs.
“We asking a lot out of him,” Anthony said of Nurk. “But we asking a lot of everybody. We gotta figure it out and we gotta go. This is the playoffs.”
The Blazers ask too much of Dame. They ask too much of CJ and even right now, they ask too much of Carmelo. But Lillard fought hard to get them here because he believed Nurkić could do more too. He’s made good on Dame’s belief many times before. Whether they can make this an interesting series, or instead fall in an awful 3-1 deficit, will depend on whether he can make good on Dame’s belief once again before the Blazers run out of time.