Feb 27, 2013; Portland, OR, USA; Portland Trail Blazers point guard Damian Lillard (0) drives past Denver Nuggets small forward Kenneth Faried (35) at the Rose Garden. Mandatory Credit: Craig Mitchelldyer-USA TODAY Sports

You no doubt looked at Portland’s April schedule and came up with the same conclusion I did: the Blazers simply can not catch a break. It seems like every other team in the NBA has at least one cream puff left on their schedule. Not Portland. Not only have the Blazers faced a playoff team (or a very close/relatively close playoff hopeful) every night of this month, every opponent they’ve had in April has had something to play for.

Sunday and Wednesday the Mavericks and the Lakers were playing for their playoff lives (since that time Dallas is done and an injury to Kobe Bryant has thrown the Lakers post-season hopes into peril). Friday the Oklahoma City Thunder, the top team in the Western Conference, were playing to maintain the half-game advantage over the San Antonio Spurs that will give them home court advantage in the Conference Finals. On both ends of the spectrum, there are important things on the line.

Sadly for Portland, the trend of facing a strong, playoff-bound team with something on the line doesn’t change Sunday afternoon in Denver. The Nuggets are in, they’ve racked up a super impressive 54 wins, they have a fighting chance of living up to some of the borderline ludicrous computer prognostications of the preseason. Even so, Denver is working through a couple big injuries, and though they might be in the three spot in the West, they’re still only a half-game up on the Grizzlies and the Clippers respectively.

And here’s the kicker, because of the vagaries of playoff seeding, all four division champions are guaranteed a top four seed and therefore home court advantage in at least round one. The Clippers have locked up the Pacific Division, but neither the Grizzlies (Southwest) nor the Nuggets (Northwest) will win their division, therefore if Denver wants to hold on to home court, they have to finish 3rd in the West. To finish 3rd in the West, the Nuggets have to keep winning.

Also, Denver lost their last game. A two-game losing streak could be the difference between starting the playoffs at home (giving the Nuggets a huge advantage), or having to go on the road to face a top-three team.

Denver is going to be motivated Sunday afternoon.

Blazers Starting 5: PG Damian Lillard, SG Will Barton, SF Victor Claver, PF LaMarcus Aldridge, C J.J Hickson

Nuggets Starting 5: PG Andre Miller, SG Andre Iguodala, SF Wilson Chandler, PF Kenneth Faried, C Kosta Koufos

In the end, Sunday’s game is going to come down to execution. Denver is a veteran heavy team with a savvy coach, and they know how to make plays and when those plays need to be made. Portland is a young team, starting three rookies, that is still trying to figure itself out while also clawing like mad to avoid a season-ending 13-game winning streak.

The difference in personnel between Portland and Denver is evident; the difference in ability to do everything necessary to win basketball games between the Blazers and the Nuggets is obvious. Portland can give themselves a chance Sunday if, and only if, they make almost no errors. An error-free basketball game, even for the best professional basketballers in the world, is a big ask. An error-free basketball game for a group of young players trying to get motivated to play a highly motivated elite-level team is impossible.

Execution will determine how this game ends, but match-ups will dictate what this game will be like when it starts. The best match-up for Portland is going to be at the point guard spot. Andre Miller is likely to get the start again as Ty Lawson continues his slow and calculated return from a foot injury. Miller is the definition of veteran point guard, but he won’t be able to do too much to stop or even slow down Damian Lillard. My guess is Dre will do everything in his power to get Lillard in foul trouble early, but even then, it’s unlikely Lillard will have his minutes curtailed.

If Lillard/Miller is the best match-up for Portland, the combined match-ups of Will Barton/Andre Iguodala and Victor Claver/Wilson Chandler are by far the worst. Barton couldn’t do much defensively against Kobe Bryant, which was to be expected, though Iguodala is not on Kobe’s level he’ll be more than a handful for Barton. Chandler versus Claver might not be as bad as Barton versus Iguodala, but Chandler will try to over power Claver, and if Victor gets caught up on the help-side or doesn’t rotate back to the wings fast enough, Chandler could light the Blazers up with corner threes.

The match-up to watch is going to be LaMarcus Aldridge and Kenneth Faried. Get over for a minute that Faried could have been a Blazer, and just enjoy two of the best young guys at their position playing totally opposite styles. LA is going to drag Faried out of the middle with jumpers; Faried is going to bang LaMarcus in the post every chance he gets. Denver is likely to win this game going away, but if LaMarcus Aldridge can get super hot and also keep Faried from devouring offensive rebounds and getting easy points in the paint, the Blazers might have a chance to keep it respectable.

What to Watch For

• Points in the paint. Portland can’t defend the inside. Denver scores most of their points inside. Over the course of three games, the Blazers have surrendered a boat-load points in the paint to the Nuggets. There’s no reason to believe that will change Sunday. If Portland wants to stay in this game, they need to stay within at least a dozen points of Denver in the paint. OK, maybe a dozen is too close. At least 20. OK 25…you get where I’m going with this right?
• Three point shooting. When the Blazers beat the Nuggets in Portland, Denver shot and missed a record 21 three-pointers. That won’t happen again, but if the Blazers can significantly outscore the Nuggets from three, they’ll have a chance. With Danilo Gallinari out of the line-up, Portland won’t even have to contend with Denver’s best long-range threat, so there’s that.
• Second half scoring. Early in the season, it was slow starts that were killing the Blazers. Lately it’s been second half lulls. Portland played themselves out of games against both the Lakers and the Thunder by flat lining in the third quarter (seven points in the 3rd against OKC was a franchise low). A strong second half in Denver would be nice. A fast start and a health finish would be great, but lets take it one step at a time.

@mikeacker | @ripcityproject | mike.acker1@gmail.com

Feb 27, 2013; Portland, OR, USA; Denver Nuggets point guard Ty Lawson (3) shoots over Portland Trail Blazers point guard Damian Lillard (0) at the Rose Garden. Mandatory Credit: Craig Mitchelldyer-USA TODAY Sports

Conventional wisdom tells us that people are very rarely give second chances. But what if that second chance isn’t so much a chance to make up for a previously missed opportunity, but a chance to be successful a in the exact same way a second time? Does this count as a second chance? Or can it be better classified as tempting fate?

Wednesday night, down two and the ball sideline out of bounds, Terry Stotts decided to go with the play that yielded this result:

It’s hard to say that on Wednesday night the Nuggets were game planning for the low-block direct entry pass from Wesley Matthews to LaMarcus Aldridge because the shot LA got against the over-matched Wilson Chandler was about as good as the Blazers could have hoped for.

The easy explanation is that Aldridge missed a nine-footer that he usually cans because not every shot can go in. The more metaphysical explanation is that Stotts got greedy going back to the LA-game winner well, and had he chosen to draw up a play for Damian Lillard (who hit a three with three seconds left on the clock to even put the Blazers in a position to tie or win on the last possession of the game) or Wesley Matthews (who has had the hot hand for the last few games) he would have been rewarded for his originality and daring-do  with a game-winner three bomb.

All things considered, Stotts lived with what he called a very good look from LaMarcus Aldridge, and given the chance, LA on the left block with his back to the basket is probably the play he draws up again. No risk no reward, as Steve Guttenberg would say, is not really the motto the Terry Stotts led Blazers have stuck to this season (almost all of this season’s game winners have come in tied games, and given the choice Stotts almost always goes for the tie and not the win). It makes for less thrilling basketball, but I understand taking the safe route when you’re a first year head coach playing with house money and an over-achieving lottery team.

LaMarcus Aldridge’s missed jumper is what will be remembered from Wednesday night. What probably won’t be remembered, though, is that Portland played neck and neck with one of the Western Conference’s best out and out scoring teams. What also won’t be remembered is how the Blazers did it. Portland got balanced scoring from its starting five, and 13 off the bench from Meyers Leonard. Meyers hasn’t had a double-digit scoring effort since November, and he hasn’t played a key offensive role in a meaningful game probably at all in 2012-13.

Maybe that Wednesday was Leonard’s 21st birthday had an impact on his play (he’s a year older now so maybe he’s a year more mature in terms of basketball ability). Possibly Meyers had a big night because the Nuggets played very little defense and all of Leonard’s points came from dunks and free throws. Whatever the case may be, molding Meyers Leonard into a regular contributor is what this final run of games is going to be all about.

By falling to the Nuggets on Wednesday, the Blazers finish February 3-9. I predicted they’d come out of the second to last full month of the season 7-5. Clearly, I was wrong. Even more clearly, the “playoff race” is now for head in the sand die hard fans only.

That doesn’t mean all hope is lost. It just means that winning is no longer the measure by which to decide if a game is successful or not. And losing is no longer something that should make these Blazers and its fan base despondent and dejected. It means that Meyers Leonard is going to get more run. It means that Eric Maynor is also going to more prominently featured, same with Victor Claver. It means that, even in losses that are likely forthcoming, Portland is going to try and play some exciting basketball. Exciting basketball that will serve as a notice of what is coming.

Hopefully as this team takes advantage of the stretch run to try new things, so too will Terry Stotts take advantage of the opportunity looser games will afford him to go for game winning shots and not game tying shots.

The Blazers have the next two days off before facing the Minnesota Timberwolves at the Rose Garden on Saturday.

Box Score

Standings

@mikeacker | @ripcityproject | mike.acker1@gmail.com

Feb 27, 2013; Portland, OR, USA; Portland Trail Blazers center Meyers Leonard (11) reacts after a dunk over Denver Nuggets point guard Andre Miller (24) at the Rose Garden. Mandatory Credit: Craig Mitchelldyer-USA TODAY Sports

January 15, 2013; Denver, CO, USA; Denver Nuggets guard Andre Miller (24) drives to the basket past Portland Trailblazers guard Wesley Matthews (2) during the first half at the Pepsi Center. Mandatory Credit: Chris Humphreys-USA TODAY Sports

On Wednesday night, when the Denver Nuggets roll into the Rose Garden to face the Blazers, there’s a pretty good chance that this will be the game with the biggest gap in trajectory between the two teams facing off. The Nuggets have lost seven games in the last two months, they’re currently two and a half games from home court advantage in the first round of the Playoffs, and even though they didn’t (or at least haven’t) lived up to the major hype dumped on them in the pre-season by the likes of John Hollinger, the Nuggets are AT WORST a second-round Playoff out.

We all know where the Blazers are and where they are going. More than that, though, Portland is right on the verge of being well within the rational time frame for shutting down their “Playoff run” rhetoric and handing 20 minutes a night to Meyers Leonard, Victor Claver, Will Barton, and maybe even Joel Freeland. The Nuggets are on the up, heading in exactly the right direction. The Blazers are heading in the right direction too, but they’re still on the down-side of the upswing (if that makes any sense).

Blazers Starting 5: PG Damian Lillard, SG Wesley Matthews, SF Nicolas Batum, PF LaMarcus Aldridge, C J.J. Hickson

Nuggets Starting 5: PG Ty Lawson, SG Andre Iguodala, SF Wilson Chandler, PF Kenneth Faried, C Kosta Koufos

Portland has beaten Denver, and they can beat Denver. Those facts aren’t up for debate. What is, though, is whether or not on Wednesday night the Blazers will have that same mojo they dug up for their pretty inspiring win last week over the Boston Celtics.

In that win, Portland needed a little bit of everything, 10 rebounds from Victor Claver, five threes from Wesley Matthews, clutch work in the paint from Damian Lillard. If the Blazers can com up with those same kind of plays against the Nuggets, they’ll be in good shape.

However, there are some significant differences between the Nuggets and the Celtics, even if both teams get the bulk of their scoring from the wings and rely on speedy ball handlers to penetrate and create space. Boston is a grind-it-out defensive team. By comparison, Denver is totally fine with simply trying to outscore their opponent. Over the course of this month, the Nuggets have only failed to score 100 points one time.

Coincidentally, that one sub 100-point game was a home win by Denver over the Celtics. In all four of their losses in February, the Nuggets scored at least 108 points. Even in losing efforts, this Denver squad can fill it up.

The upside, though, is the Nuggets play fast and loose, with little to no emphasis on shut-down defense. Portland will be able to score, that won’t be the issue. If the Blazers want to get a win Wednesday, they’ll need to put all of their energy into defense. Denver will give up scores. If Portland can avoid getting caught up in a scoring contest, they’ll have a chance Wednesday.

What to Watch For

• Eric Maynor. My prediction is that Maynor will finish his first run of Blazer games (from the Celtics game until the end of the season) averaging between 20 and 25 minutes per. Maynor played 14 minutes and 49 seconds in his debut on Sunday. He wasn’t amazing, but to his credit it was his longest run in an NBA game since logging basically 20 minutes with the Thunder in a game way back on the 1st of December. Portland’s newest acquisition has played more than 20 minutes only twice this season. He’ll go over 20 minutes at least 10 times as the Blazers play out what remains of 2012-13. My guess is he hits that 20 minute mark for the first time Wednesday night. Maynor knows how to run the point, he’s a confident ball player, and he’s out to prove that OKC made a big mistake by swapping him to an in-division rival for absolutely nothing. Maynor will go head to head with Andre Miller, Wednesday night. That might be the match-up to watch.
• Can Portland get some contributions from unexpected places. Victor Claver is coming off his very best run of the season. Hopefully he’ll be able to follow it up. Will Barton plays well when the other team plays no defense. Joel Freeland still has a ton of potential. If one of those guys can put together a big night, the Blazers will put themselves in position to get a win.
• Shooting. Portland has become a knock-down shooting team. When they make their shots they win. Last time the Nuggets and the Blazers played in the Rose Garden, Denver couldn’t make a shot outside of the painted area. The Nuggets aren’t going to miss all 22 of their three-point attempts again, and the Blazers aren’t going to win if they once again give up 74 points in the paint, however, if Portland can knock down a decent number of jump shots, they can win on Wednesday.

@mikeacker | @ripcityproject | mike.acker1@gmail.com