The Portland Trail Blazers followed up a depressing three-game losing streak with a pair of wins at Moda Center in just over 24 hours. Ten games into the regular season, Chauncey Billups' team is 5-5, enduring not only completely unforeseen struggles of its best player, but an ongoing investigation into allegations of workplace misconduct against Neil Olshey, the person who put it together.
The Blazers, clearly, are still a work in progress. Here are three encouraging signs for Portland amid its choatic start to the regular season.
A top-five offense…during Damian Lillard's worst slump
Six made threes and 9-of-19 from the field in a game his team shot 37.9% overall wasn't enough to convince Damian Lillard he'd broken out of his slump. He insisted after Portland's blowout win over the painfully short-handed Los Angeles Lakers that he could've shot the ball better, alluding to good looks he missed against a porous purple-and-gold defense. Lillard did admit his performance on Saturday night, though, was at least a step in the right direction toward his career-worst shooting problems subsiding.
Even better news for the Blazers? They've been just as good as anticipated offensively despite one of basketball's all-time shot-makers laboring to 22.4 percent shooting on a huge volume of pull-up triples, per NBA.com/stats. That number is bound to steadily and substantially increase as the season continues even if Lillard fails to reach his MVP-level peak of the last couple years.
Even if he settles in somewhere below there, it's clear Portland won't have trouble scoring at a near-elite clip this season.
This team boasts a 112.9 offensive rating over the season's first 10 games, per Cleaning the Glass, fifth-highest in the league. Billups' fingerprints are clearly all over the offense, too. The Blazers have upped their transition frequency, amount of drives to the rim and percentage of assisted baskets this season compared to last, all while cutting mid-range shots and their total number of dribbles. Portland's offense still relies mostly on ball screens and off-dribble jump-shooting, but the particulars of that identity have definitely changed in the way Billups envisioned.
Just like a bigger sample size will help Lillard, it may hurt the likes of McCollum, Norman Powell and Anfernee Simons specifically. Those guys have been shooting the lights out in the season's early going, combining for 41.3% from deep with nearly half of their attempts coming off the bounce. Simons' impressive all-around start offensively certainly looks real, but is still a major outlier compared to career norms.
Regression to the mean is almost inevitable in both directions for the Blazers, basically—just like an offense that ranks among the league's very best.
At least they're forcing more turnovers
Portland is up to 18th in defensive efficiency, per Cleaning the Glass, in wake of Russell Westbrook, Carmelo Anthony and the Lakers barfing their way to 34.4% shooting on Saturday night at Moda Center. Even finishing with a top-20 defense this season would be a win for the Blazers after they were second-to-last a year ago, only above the historically bad Sacramento Kings.
They've been lucky to face a string of opponents down multiple key contributors, though, and ranking bottom-five in both opponents' frequency of shots at the rim and from beyond the arc isn't an unavoidable evil of Billups' more aggressive scheme. There are indicators that Portland isn't as improved defensively as its almost-average current defensive rating suggests.
Still, the Blazers forcing turnovers on 14.4 percent of their opponents' possessions, per NBA.com/stats, is a positive development that likely has some staying power. They rank 16th in that category after finishing bottom-five for all nine seasons of Terry Stotts' tenure in Rip City, including 27th each of the last two years. An uptick in opposing turnover rate was essentially guaranteed given the proactive nature of Billups' defense, but the extent of it is still worth celebrating for a roster not exactly teeming with stoppers and lacking in length and athleticism.
Overhauling their defensive shot profile might be too much to ask of the Blazers. Their personnel deficiencies at the point of attack and closing out to shooters make it easier for teams to crease the paint and spray the ball out to shooters than it should be. As long as Portland continues creating miscues at a near-average rate, though, some strides on defense will have definitely been made this season.
Emerging versatility and continuity
The Blazers' rotation is clearly still in flux.
Nassir Little spent the opening few games as Portland's first sub. It's lately been Simons getting that honor, and there was even a game when Larry Nance and Cody Zeller entered first together. The Blazers were locked into giving nine players regular minutes until Tony Snell recovered from a sprain in his right foot. He's been mostly anonymous since a promising debut in Portland's loss to the Philadelphia 76ers, only seeing garbage-time minutes against Los Angeles.
Billups committed to giving small-ball lineups with Nance at center a scheduled shift a few games ago. He's grown a bit too comfortable going zone since debuting it against the Memphis Grizzlies. The Blazers' hybrid 2-3 has only avoided being gashed against offenses with shaky shooting. Conversely, no one had tried playing zone on Portland until the Charlotte Hornets; the Indiana Pacers and Lakers played a lot of it the last two games.
Just prior to tipoff of a disappointing home-opening loss to the Sacramento Kings, Lillard took a mic at center court of Moda Center. He thanked Rip City for its staunch support, indirectly acknowledging an ugly offseason, then admitted the Blazers wouldn't be “perfect” while overhauling the way they've played on both ends of the floor for so long. Lillard also stressed they'd work hard while doing so.
For the most part, save for a few game-changing stints on the road, effort and intensity haven't been the issue for Portland. With more time to experiment and get to know his players, the better Billups—a first-time head coach at any level of sports, not just basketball's pinnacle—and the Blazers should be.
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