PORTLAND — The Portland Trail Blazers got both their first win of the regular season and the Chauncey Billups era in rousing fashion on Saturday night, blowing out the Phoenix Suns 134-105 at Moda Center. Here are four takeaways from Portland's dominant victory over the reigning Western Conference champions, a game every bit as lopsided as the final score suggests.
Scraping The Ceiling
This game was a rout in every sense of the term. The Blazers outscored the Suns by 36 from beyond the arc, nearly doubling the visitors up in attempts by launching a whopping 50 triples—a threshold Damian Lillard, C.J. McCollum and company reached just four times last season. Billups' team committed just nine turnovers compared to Phoenix's 15. The Suns had just six fast-break points, while Portland—after scoring just two in the opener—raced out to 21 points in transition.
His team clearly incapable of stanching the bleeding, Monty Williams waved the white flag at the 9:42 mark of the fourth quarter, calling his regulars to the bench for good as Phoenix trailed 116-83. Billups didn't wait much longer to give the Blazers' deep reserves an opportunity to play in extended garbage time, bringing in Greg Brown III and Ben McLemore with 6:25 left in the game.
Mere moments before that, C.J. Elleby, who'd subbed in for McCollum some 90 seconds earlier, finished a lob from Nassir Little with two-handed authority, bringing a piqued Moda Center to its feet once again.
Billups didn't mince words after the game. Finally dried off after celebrating his first career win in a wet, raucous post-game locker room, the rookie coach confirmed what seemed obvious: Portland reached its ceiling.
“We played as good as we could play, to be honest,” Billups said. We made shots. Defensively we did a really good job. We took care of the basketball. We were focused in on all of our coverages. And…man, it was just beautiful. It was beautiful to see. And it was beautiful not only for me, but for the guys to see what we're capable of when we're focused.”
The second game of the season isn't the time to think long-term, especially considering the Suns were playing on the second night of a back-to-back. The Blazers won't make 21 threes every night, either, and Phoenix will probably shoot better than 32.1 percent from deep—shooters like Cam Johnson, Landry Shamet and Jae Crowder all clanked multiple good looks, mostly early—the next time these teams meet.
Like Billups clarified, though, Portland won't ever play much better than it did on Saturday. Now that the Blazers' ceiling is established, their next challenge is scraping it with regularity.
Losing Norm? Gaining Small-Ball
McCollum was Portland's top scorer against Phoenix, dropping 28 points on a what seemed like an endless amount of pull-up jumpers from mid-range and three-point land. Indeed, not a single one of his baskets came inside the paint, let alone the restricted area. But McCollum might have played Robin to Norman Powell's Batman if the latter hadn't hurt his left knee midway through the second quarter, ending a heater that seeemed likely to continue burning.
Powell scored 16 points on 6-of-8 shooting in just over 12 minutes of playing time, exploiting his size and athletic advantages over Chris Paul and Shamet offensively. His injury came just after Powell had scored a quick eight points, extending the Blazers' lead to 19. He briskly hobbled off the floor and went straight to the locker room, the Blazers finally announcing during halftime he wouldn't return for the game's remainder.
Billups had no update on Powell's status after the game, only mentioning that he'd already undergone an MRI. Obviously, losing Powell for an extended period would be tough for the Blazers. But his absence did coax Billups into rolling out small-ball lineups for the first time, groups featuring Larry Nance Jr. at center that ignited Portland's transition attack—and again spoke well of its bench.
“I like our depth, I really do,” Billups told ClutchPoints of the Blazers' downsized lineups. “Obviously Larry plays a lot of his minutes at the four right now because we have two really good centers; [Jusuf Nurkic] is playing well and [Cody Zeller's] been excellent for us. But in a pinch, playing Larry at the small-ball five is gonna be a weapon for us all year. And even if sometimes we have to slide [Nassir Little] to the 4, I feel comfortable with that as well. So I think it's just a luxury of having depth on our team, and guys that can play multiple positions. It's a weapon for us.”
Keep your fingers crossed on Powell. Here's hoping Saturday's incident is a scare, doing nothing more than proving the efficacy of various iterations of small-ball the Blazers didn't have available to them last season.
Simons and Little Do It Again
Powell was cooking before he went down. McCollum had his jumper on automatic all night, and at times played solid individual defense on Devin Booker. Lillard attacked downhill relentlessly in pick-and-roll action, scoring himself, assisting a teammate or forcing the defensive help that initiated Portland's much-improved ball and player movement.
There's a case to be made, though, that Anfernee Simons and Nassir Little were every bit as good as the Blazers' starting guards against Phoenix—at least for select stints. Buillding on solid if mostly unspectacular opening-night performances, both played key roles in Portland putting Phoenix away early.
Little, who Billups lauded for his all-out effort, sometimes looked like the best athlete on the floor, pursuing rebounds with physical abandon, sprinting in transition and finishing with power and finesse at the rim. Nobody played harder or with more force than Little on Saturday night.
All but one of his seven field goals came in the restricted area. The other? A tough catch-and-shoot three from center between two Suns defenders—the type of impressive shot-making that's quickly becoming routine for Simons.
He showed off that jumper on multiple occasions, but what again excited most about Simons' game was how comfortable he looked with ball in hand. This just isn't a move he was capable of making in an NBA game before this season.
Little and Simons aren't who they were tonight quite yet. It'll take half a season's worth of games played at that level to believe it's their new normal. But even if that best-case scenario doesn't come to pass, just the fact Little and Simons are capable of tandem performances like Saturday's at all is very encouraging for Portland.