Damian Lillard and C.J. McCollum are the Portland Trail Blazers. No star tandem in basketball is more synonymous with their incumbent team than Portland's, a reality owed both to Lillard and McCollum's longevity in Rip City as well just how much of the Blazers' sustained success has been driven by them.
Portland owns the league's longest active playoff streak entering 2021-22, an eight-year run that includes five trips to the postseason with Lillard and McCollum behind the wheel. The Blazers' longtime ball-screen-based, dribble-heavy offense under Terry Stotts was a direct reflection of their star guards' preferred playing style. It's no coincidence with Lillard and McCollum dominating the ball that Portland has ranked first or second in pull-up jumpers per game each of the last four seasons, according to NBA.com/stats.
Fortunately, their absence for Monday night's preseason game against the Sacramento Kings at Moda Center is no indication of their health or readiness for the regular season. Chauncey Billups is simply resting Lillard and McCollum, giving their legs a break before Portland plays two more exhibition games on the road before its regular-season opener on October 20th. Not that the Blazers' rookie coach would be all that jarred by his starting backcourt missing games that actually matter, though.
As Billups told it after Saturday's practice, his team won't be playing any differently on Monday night as Lillard and McCollum watch from the sidelines in street clothes than it normally would.
“Those two guys won't play in the game, but we don't change the way that we play,” he said. “We still try to play the same way offensively, with unselfishness. Defensively, we pick up, we pressure. Nothing changes.”
That's a far cry from seasons past, when the simultaneous resting of Lillard and McCollum would have left Portland grasping at straws offensively. Pick-and-roll after pick-and-roll and dribble hand-off after dribble hand-off for Anfernee Simons and Gary Trent Jr., for instance, wouldn't exactly have produced efficient offense given their inability to get to the rim and make plays for teammates. It's not like Jusuf Nurkic, even now, is equipped to be a true offensive fulcrum from the post and elbows a la Nikola Jokic and Joel Embiid.
It speaks to the variability, randomness and overarching principles of Billups' offensive attack that he's confident the Blazers won't have to drastically alter their gameplan without Lillard and McCollum to score consistently. Perhaps that'd be a bit different if Monday's game came in the regular season. For Billups, official exhibition action might as well be a glorified extension of practice in training camp.
“To me this is still training camp, right?” he said. “A lot of people think once the game start training camp's over. Training camp is not over until the preseason's over, for me.”
Portland is clearly still working to find comfortable footing in a completely revamped offensive system. Expect to see the Blazers on Monday getting the ball from side to side in the halfcourt, attacking early in the shot clock with simple kick aheads and making a more concerted effort to attack the rim downhill, the latter of which Billups said earlier this week he didn't see enough of in the preseason opener.
In that vein, Lillard and McCollum not playing could actually prove beneficial. Portland still has multiple players capable of launching off-dribble threes and pull-up twos with them on the sideline, but a presumed starting trio of Simons, Norman Powell and Nassir Little could give the Blazers a sense of burst and physicality on the drive they often lack when Lillard and McCollum are options one and two.
In general, Portland's second preseason game should serve as the perfect opportunity for this team to heartily embrace the ball and player movement Billups has made a theme of his offensive ethos. The additional size afforded by Powell sliding up to shooting guard and Little starting at small forward should improve the Blazers' point-of-attack defense, too.
“I'm happy with where we are,” Billups said of Portland's progress in training camp. “I'm happy with just how these guys are really trying to pick it up, thing we're trying to implement and do. I'm happy about it, but I also know it takes time.”
The scoreboard could look ugly on Monday night depending on who Luke Walton decides to play. The Blazers, like every team in the league, are at an immense talent disadvantage without their two best players. But process looms far larger than results in the preseason, and continuing to grow comfortable in Billups' schemes on both ends of the floor—but especially on offense—without Lillard and McCollum would be an encouraging sign of Portland's ongoing progress as the regular season draws closer and closer.
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