Portland Trail Blazers
The 2020-21 Portland Trail Blazers season can be defined by overcoming a myriad of injuries (yet again) to avoid the play-in tournament as the 6-seed in the West but then getting bounced by The Joker in 6 games.
What did we learn?
This was the last go around for Terry Stotts whose tenure as Blazers head coach has ended after nine seasons.
The Portland defense was flat out atrocious, an Achilles heel that had a pair of pliers clamped to it. The Blazers had long needed versatility on the wing and at forward to help the undersized-ness of Dame and C.J., but the offseason additions of Robert Covington and Derrick Jones Jr. didn’t come close to moving the needle like we thought they would. Only the Kings were worse defensively than the Blazers.
It sure didn’t help that Nurkic broke his wrist in mid-January and missed over two months. That sure didn’t help at all. The injury bug just never left this team. The game after Nurk went down, CJ suffered a hairline fracture in his foot, causing him to miss the same two months as Nurk. Oh, and Zach Collins missed the entire season for basically the second year in a row.
Without his running mate and his Bosnian Beast, the second and third best players on this team, the fact that Dame imposed his will in such a profound way to keep this team afloat for two months, over a third of the season, has gone wildly overlooked.
The Blazers had no business contending in the grueling Western Conference, but there they were, because once again it was Dame Time all the time, especially when the Blazers needed him most. Logo Lillard continued to do what he does best, overcoming obstacles no matter how high the mountain is to climb. Dame has always been lauded for being one of the most clutch players in the league, but this time it became officially official: No player in the NBA scored more clutch points than Dame. Nobody else came close to matching his astounding shot creation and off-the-dribble 3s with the game on the line.
The fact that Melo and Enes Kanter were the third and fourth leading scorers for the Blazers for two months should tell you a lot. Melo actually played about as well as you could ask him to. But defensively with Melo and/or Kanter out there… it was a shit show.
CJ and Nurk did return and the Blazers offense was incredibly good in March, the #1 offense in the league over the month with a 120.2 offensive rating. That damn defense though was incredibly bad, the worst defense in the league over the month with a 118.4 defensive rating. That still equates to a positive net rating, however, it was actually in April where things got harriest in Portland.
Neil Olshey flipped Gary Trent Jr. (who was having a fine season) for Norm Powell, thought to bring in some more defensive play-making and offense in transition. The problem was that Powell struggled to make his 3s and the Blazers lost some size on the perimeter. But the even bigger issue, and the biggest problem of all, was that Dame was hampered by a hamstring injury, losing his late-game juice. In April games decided by less than five points in the final five minutes, the Blazers lost five out of six games. There was even a stretch of losing 9 out of 11, struggling mightily against the league’s best competition because they didn’t have their superhero at full strength to save them.
That’s when the outside noise grew loudest, calling for Stotts to be fired, demanding that the Blazers blow it up. And what happened next is an all too familiar story.
The Blazers won 10 out of the final 12 games of the season which included Dame scoring over 30 points in seven straight. Portland finished as the 6-seed, out-kicking the Lakers and avoiding the play-in altogether.
However, defense is most important come playoff time, and the Blazers didn’t have an answer for the MVP and the Jamal Murray-less Nuggets.
Stotts and the Blazers will always have that run to the Western Conference Finals in 2018, but it was ultimately time for a change after another first-round exit, the fourth time that’s happened in the last five years.
Neil Olshey pushed the blame onto Stotts to save his own ass, but we would contest that with this roster in a stacked West, they really weren’t going anywhere.
But whatever you do, you can’t blame Dame.
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Did our preseason Over/Under prediction hit?
Over 40.5 wins and we’re taking a flyer on Dame as the 2020-21 MVP.
Blazers 2020-21 Record: (42-30)
YES, our preseason Over/Under prediction hit! Dame was not the MVP, though.
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What’s Next?
Chauncey Billups is here. Arriving amidst a boatload of controversy probably wasn’t the beginning to his first head coaching gig that he had in mind, but the dust seems to have mostly cleared.
The hot-topic question as always: Do you keep Dame and C.J. together? It’s been six years now, going on seven.
Norm Powell, free agent to be, along with Melo, Kanter, Collins (restricted), and Derrick Jones Jr. (player option). Oh, and also Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, Harry Giles and T.J. Leaf, that is if you even remembered they were on this team.
The youngin’s here have not developed the way we envisioned. Portland needs to find a way to get more from Simons and Little to bolster the weak bench.
Does Dame actually want out? He says no, but holy shit were Blazers fans quick to turn on their guy! They will only have themselves to blame.
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