The Portland Trail Blazers accepted their fate this past offseason, trading away Damian Lillard for assets that they flipped into even more assets, marking the start of a necessary, if painful, rebuilding process. The Blazers appeared to have the right combination of young players (Scoot Henderson, Anfernee Simons, Shaedon Sharpe) and more established players (Jerami Grant, Malcolm Brogdon, Deandre Ayton) to at least create a winning culture even as they encounter a plethora of growing pains.

Alas, growing pains do not become more painful than the beatdown they took from the Oklahoma City Thunder on Thursday night. The Thunder, who had the size and skill advantage at every position, simply went to work, demolishing a young Blazers team that was without a few of its best players by handing them one of their worst losses in franchise history, a 139-77 shellacking.

These are the kinds of losses that tend to leave a bitter aftertaste in an entire organization's mouth. How does one recover from a beatdown of this magnitude? Whatever the case may be, head coach Chauncey Billups is just chalking this defeat to Murphy's Law being in full effect.

“It was almost like a perfect storm, to be honest with you. Nothing really worked for us,” Billups said in his postgame presser, via ESPN.

The Blazers simply could not toss a pebble into the ocean. They shot a horrendous 27.7 percent from the field for the entire game, which is reminiscent of a performance from a ragtag crew at a rec center, not from a professional basketball team. Still, Chauncey Billups thinks that, despite the night the entire team would want to forget, there were some positives to take away nonetheless.

“I mean, I will say this. I thought that we generated some pretty good looks in the first half. [But] the fact that we couldn't make pretty much anything deflated us,” Billups added.

Nonetheless, a 62-point blowout loss isn't an omen, whether good or bad, of the Blazers' future. As one would recall, the Thunder were on the receiving end of a 73-point demolition from the Memphis Grizzlies back in December 2021. Now, the Thunder are one of the best teams in the association. There is light at the end of the tunnel for the Blazers, but they have to continue that long, tedious grind before reaching that point.