Will the calendar turning to January bring some relief for the Trail Blazers?
Wednesday night’s win over Sacramento brought a brief respite to what’s been a nightmarish December for the Portland Trail Blazers.
The 102-89 victory, accomplished without injured All-Star point guard Damian Lillard, snapped a six-game losing streak and raised Portland’s record to a sorely disappointing 14-20.
The overarching problem that’s caused the Blazers to drop seven of their last nine and 10 of their last 14 games has been abysmal defense. After allowing at least 110 points in a game just 24 times during the regular season in 2015-16, Portland has surrendered that many in 20 of its first 34 regular season games this year.
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The Blazers allow the third-most points in the league per game, 111.8, and allow 113.3 points per 100 possessions, a defensive rating that ranks dead last in the NBA. Needless to say, it’s going to be hard to make the playoffs with the worst defense in the game.
After a 44-win season last year and a first-round playoff win over the Los Angeles Clippers, Portland decided to mainly keep their young team intact. The 2016-17 Blazers roster does not contain a single player older than 28.
Star shooting guard C.J. McCollum received a four-year contract extension worth $106 million and is rewarding the team’s trust in him with a scoring average of a shade over 22 points per game on 43.1 percent from three. Tim Frazier left for New Orleans, Brian Roberts went back to Charlotte and Chris Kaman, Cliff Alexander and Luis Montero aren’t in the NBA this season. Other than that, the team is pretty similar to what it was last year.
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The two big additions the team made in the offseason, signing Evan Turner to a $70 million contract and bringing Festus Ezeli— an odd man out in Golden State after needing the cap space to sign Kevin Durant — in from the Warriors, have not panned out thus far.
Turner is shooting just 42.6 percent this season and is averaging his lowest per-game point and rebound totals since his rookie season. His shot chart is not pretty.
Besides his little sweet spots at the top of the foul line, the little left baseline shot in the paint and the right corner three, Turner isn’t really comfortable shooting from anywhere. Even his success in the restricted area is a few percentage points worse than the league average.
His 12.4 PER and .032 win shares per 48 minutes (.100 is the league average) are huge misses as well. ESPN’s Real Plus Minus player evaluation system has Turner ranked 96th among 99 eligible shooting guards, hardly what you want from someone making $16.39 million this season.
Ezeli signed a two-year, $16 million contract that looked like a steal at the time for a Portland team in dire need of interior defense, but he’s yet to see the floor for the Blazers after offseason knee surgery. The Blazers oddly have the second-best field goal defense among shots taken in the restricted area, but rank last in defending shots taken in the paint outside the restricted area, per NBA.com.
Kevin Durant crushed the Trail Blazers this weekend. Will he be the MVP this season? pic.twitter.com/Ni2iMwukFy
— The Tylt (@TheTylt) December 19, 2016
What’s also killed the Blazers are their bottom 10 field goal defense against threes, including the worst field goal defense among shots taken at least 25 feet away from the basket, and the second-most points allowed per game (22.6) on made free throws. Portland forces turnovers on just 11.5 percent of opponents’ possessions, per Basketball Reference, the third-lowest rate in the league.
The good news for the Blazers? They’ve been in this position before. Portland’s record after 34 games last season? 14-20, same as this year. The Blazers had a five-game losing streak in December last year, and just ended a six-game December losing streak in 2016. After 40 games last season, the Blazers were eight games under .500, so there’s still plenty of time for them to turn it around.
“The sense of urgency has risen,” McCollum told the Associated Press after Wednesday’s game. “We understand where we’re at in the season. We understand where we turned the corner at last year, about the same time. So if we want to get better, the time is now.”
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Lillard will return soon from his injured ankle — he’s already burning people on Twitter about it — and try to lead the Blazers back to being one of the best six or seven teams in the Western Conference. As bad as Portland has been thus far, the lack of depth in the conference works in the team’s favor. Going into Friday’s play, the Blazers are just a game behind the 14-18 Kings for the No. 8 seed and just five games separate Sacramento and Phoenix and Dallas, who are tied for the worst record in the West.
Things may get worse before getting better for the Blazers, who have three road games over the next week at San Antonio, Minnesota and Golden State. But time is still on Portland’s side, and a playoff run is certainly not out of the question, especially if the team acquires a big man like Andrew Bogut from the Mavericks.
But for Portland to make a second-half resurgence like it did last season, the defense needs to improve before a trip to the lottery turns the Blazers into the NBA’s biggest disappointment.
