There are a number of teams in professional sports who were great but never broke through to win a championship. The Portland Trail Blazers look like they're the next team to fall into that category.
This team has an elite backcourt. Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum are lethal scorers and two of the best players at their respective positions; the Blazers acquired center Hassan Whiteside from the Miami Heat in the offseason to help mitigate the Jusuf Nurkic injury; Rodney Hood and Kent Bazemore are solid veterans; Anfernee Simons and Nassir Little are budding wings.
Last season, head coach Terry Stotts and the Blazers manufactured 53 wins and reached the Western Conference Finals for the first time since 2000. With Kevin Durant leaving the Golden State Warriors in free agency, the door opened a bit for other teams in the West to finally get over the hump. You could argue that no team should've benefited more from that occurrence than the Blazers given their continued struggles against the Dubs in the playoffs.
Well, they haven't.
Portland has started the season 5-8. Generally speaking, no team should be pushing the panic button 13 games into the season. At the same time, the Blazers aren't exactly losing to NBA title contenders or ones at full strength, so to speak — outside of their first game, which they lost to the Denver Nuggets.
The Blazers lost to a Warriors team playing without Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green, and D'Angelo Russell, a Philadelphia 76ers team playing without Joel Embiid, the Sacramento Kings, and mediocre Brooklyn Nets and San Antonio Spurs squads.
Lillard is averaging a career-high 29.8 points per game and had a 60-point game against the Nets — except the Blazers lost that game. Portland's offense has been mediocre despite Lillard's heroics, while the defense and rebounding have been a major problem. The Blazers just signed Carmelo Anthony, and maybe the veteran provides a bit of a scoring jolt, but this is somewhat of a desperation move that won't cure some of the biggest ills.
There's minimal room for error in the West. Sure, if you get in the playoffs anything can happen, but if a team goes into an epic slump or never rights the ship, they could miss the spring festivities — especially this season.
The Los Angeles Clippers have played pretty well on both ends despite not having Kawhi Leonard and Paul George share the court together yet, and George just scored 70 points in 44 minutes in his two return games. LeBron James and Anthony Davis are providing the Los Angeles Lakers and their home crowd with a buzz and excitement that hasn't been present in a near-decade, with the league's best defense to boot.
The Denver Nuggets have a deep core with continuity that's only going to improve. The Houston Rockets are rolling James Harden and Russell Westbrook out on the floor, with Harden nearly averaging a silly 40 points per game. The Utah Jazz are a relentless defensive unit whose offense has benefited from the arrival of Mike Conley and Bojan Bogdanovic. There's also reason to be optimistic about the Dallas Mavericks and their Luka Doncic-Kristaps Porzingis duo, as Doncic is putting up MVP numbers. Heck, the Phoenix Suns and Minnesota Timberwolves are off to hot starts.
What upside do the Blazers have? They are who they are: a very talented team that has suffered numerous disappointing playoff exits.
In 2014, Portland reached the second round of the playoffs and lost in five games to the San Antonio Spurs. The ensuing year, the Blazers lost in the first round to the Memphis Grizzlies in five games. In 2016, they lost in five games to the Warriors in the second round with Curry missing the first three games of the series. Then they were swept in back-to-back first-round series by the Warriors and New Orleans Pelicans, respectively. Last season, they made it to the Western Conference Finals but were swept by a Warriors team playing without Durant.
They didn't escape the West in the LaMarcus Aldridge-Damian Lillard era, and they haven't done it in the Damian Lillard-CJ McCollum era.
Age isn't the issue. Lillard is 29, while McCollum is 28. Lillard has talked a big game about not wanting to go elsewhere, and he just signed a supermax extension, but continued postseason shortcomings could change Lillard's mind. When does the levee break?
The bulk of the contenders in the West have rosters that look poised to remain potent forces for at least the next two to three years. The Blazers have done the right thing in sticking with their core, but it looks like they've run their course. Now they're exemplifying the effects of missing a championship window.
To be fair, we've seen teams overcome adversity and years of postseason heartbreak to win a championship. Look at last season's Toronto Raptors. Despite deep and talented teams, the Raptors failed to win the Eastern Conference for five consecutive seasons. Then they traded for Kawhi Leonard, stuck with the bulk of their core, and rolled the dice. In the playoffs, they came back after trailing in all three Eastern Conference series and went on to beat the reigning champion Warriors in the NBA Finals.
The same thing occurred in Major League Baseball this season. After losing in the first round of the playoffs four times from 2012-17, missing the playoffs in 2018, and losing outfielder Bryce Harper to free agency in the offseason that followed, many counted out the Washington Nationals. Instead, they signed left-hander Patrick Corbin, stuck with the rest of their core, did some fine-tuning, and went on to win the World Series.
From that standpoint, a turnaround to make the playoffs or going on a playoff run isn't out of the picture for Portland. With that said, what powerhouse team in the West are they beating? What are they going to do differently this time around? What big move can they make before the NBA trade deadline to significantly enhance their roster?
The Trail Blazers had their chance, but it appears they may have blown it.
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