Our Expectations Were Low But...
The Blazers somehow fell short of already low expectations in their opening night loss to the Golden State Warriors.
Nobody came into this season thinking the Portland Trail Blazers would be a good basketball team. But the display in Wednesday night’s opener somehow came up short of even the lowest expectations. The Golden State Warriors trounced the Blazers in a 139-104 blowout, the biggest home season opening blowout in franchise history. Make no mistake about it: the tank was in gear on Game 1.
The loudest cheers of the game came from the visiting Golden State fans, as well as after a video tribute to longtime head coach Terry Stotts, who made his first appearance in the Rose Garden as an opposing coach. The good vibes from the tribute to Stotts lasted until about halfway through the 2nd quarter, when the Warriors began to take control of the game. Buddy Hield was mopping the floor with Portland on both ends before Steph Curry finally got going in the second half to turn the game into a blowout.
After the game, words like “accountability” and “focus” were used by Chauncey Billups, Anfernee Simons and Deandre Ayton. All of those words, of course, were couched in the inarguable fact that it was only one game. But if this is how they’re talking after Game 1, how much worse can things get?
Billups said that he didn’t believe a single player played well and it’s hard to disagree. Scoot Henderson’s game-high 22 points came in the same way a lot of his highest statistical games came last year, with him padding his stats in a blowout. Despite a nice run of play to start the second quarter, Henderson continued to struggle with making the right decisions in the lane and not knowing when to shoot, pass or keep his dribble alive when he blew by his first defender.
Ayton and Deni Advija both harped on a lack of communication post-game. Ayton suggested that the Blazers were a little too anxious for the home opener, which is something that Avdija also mentioned. Billups pointed to focus, while also saying that sometimes you worry about the first game of the season. I have never, ever heard coaches or players say that about Opening Night in my 12 years covering NBA games. The vibe after the game was oddly positive and alarmist at the same time.
Ultimately, Wednesday night’s opener was a cruel reminder to fans that this season will be another struggle. And that the idea of being a “fun” kind of bad seems like a pretty unrealistic wish.
It would be nice if they could clean up some of their issues defensively, such as the runouts after made baskets. But the team was also losing the math game pretty definitively. While I’m not a big fan of the Joe Mazzulla-style of hunting matchups until you get a dunk or a 3-pointer, it’s clearly the way the league is trending, whereas the Blazers love to hunt for a 16-footer. The Warriors were hunting 3-pointers all night and took 48, while the Blazers got up 34 on the night.
Ayton replaced some of his midrange attempts with corner 3s, which was an interesting wrinkle, but like basically everyone else on the team Wednesday, he couldn’t make anything. Deni Avdija had some nice moments initiating the offense, but they didn’t create enough stops to really let him loose. The 3-point line will be an issue for Portland the entire season and this team’s lack of shooting may be the biggest thing that will allow them to lose a lot of games, above making drastic roster moves or anything of that sort. Their lack of shooting is what will give them one of the worst records in the league.
If they can clean up some of the transition defense, maybe they will be more watchable. But this team has been good at saying the right things even though everybody knows this team is designed to be bad. And everyone knows how bad they’re supposed to be, so you can only really believe the song and dance so many times after you’ve heard it 100 times before. You can only be bad for so long before the culture of losing–losing assignments, losing guys in transition and just plain losing–adds up. And whereas rebuilding teams have found ways to be interesting in the past, what we saw on Wednesday was something that might encourage fans to find a new show to binge-watch.
Our expectations were low. But holy shit, this is gonna be a long year.
Notes
I was very happy to see Terry Stotts get the welcome he deserved on Wednesday night. He was at the helm for the most successful basketball we’ve seen around these parts in 20 years and he’s also just an all-time classy guy.
If you looked around the box scores on the first League Pass night of the NBA season, maybe you saw the kind of work Toronto is putting in for the tank. They sat about six dudes with injuries and lost to the Cavaliers by 30. Everybody has rightfully been talking about the Wizards and Nets, but the Raptors are clearly a team to look at it in the tank race for Cooper Flagg. Hope you snagged Toronto under 29.5 like I told you to!
Either with Deni Avdija or Scoot Henderson in the game with him, we saw Anfernee Simons working more away from the ball than he did last season. It’s a place where he was comfortable working in the Dame days, but it’s something that he’s working back into the mix after he got a whole season where he had 10 eyes on him every possession. “It’s just a different look. Obviously you got guys who can pass the ball in Deni and Scoot. I can shoot it well off the ball too so we’re just using that to our advantage. With the amount of attention I get offensively, if they' hugging me on the wing, they got free driving lanes on my side and that just helps everybody else out.” Hopefully they can stop giving away points on leakouts so that they can continue getting more looks with Simons off the ball while Deni and Scoot work in transition. That was about the only enjoyable action they gave us tonight.
For his part, Deni Avdija was probably the least worried of all of the Blazers who spoke on Wednesday night. He was not at all worried about what this game meant for the rest of the season moving forward, which is the way most players take these things. Maybe he will be proven right and they’ll have a much better game against a Pelicans team missing Dejounte Murray. Or maybe, like everyone else, he’s just saying the right thing before they lineup another loss.