Kevin Love will not play Saturday against the Blazers. Credit: Russ Isabella-USA TODAY Sports

With no Love and no Rubio there’s no excuse for the Blazers to not finish this trip 3-1

— Casey Holdahl (@CHold) January 5, 2013

The above is certainly going to be the popular sentiment coming into Saturday’s game between the Blazers and the Minnesota Timberwolves in Minneapolis, the final game of this four-game trip.

I wrote a little about how it can probably be expected of Portland to have a let down after a big win, but to allow the Blazers to get away with it twice in one week seems to be a little much. Not to mention the fact that their opponent is without two of their most important players.

The beauty of NBA basketball is that the games themselves have to be played. Prior to this season’s actually beginning, the Blazers looked to be one of the weakest teams in the Western Conference. Their Saturday opponent, the Minnesota Timberwolves, looked to be the opposite. Portland was, and still is, a young, inexperienced team with limited depth and an All-Star who has a tendency to under preform and could very well be headed out the door anyway. Up north, the T-Wolves were a team with almost unlimited potential, a deep bench that was made deeper by some shrewd off-season moves, and an Olympic Gold Medalist who became the toast of the league because he “played the game the right way.”

And here we are in January of 2013. Minnesota’s depth has basically disappeared because a few of their new acquisitions have been injured (Chase Budinger and Brandon Roy), Ricky Rubio’s comeback has yet to really get off the ground, and Kevin Love is being sidelined again with a re-fracture of his third metacarpal, an injury that could require surgery and is in no way an indication that Love’s return after five weeks and not eight was too soon.

As for Portland, the Blazers are two games over .500, looking to get to three games up in the win column for the first time in the season, have been basically unbeatable in close games, and with almost nothing for a bench have only posted one of the top starting lineups in the NBA.

On paper, the path through 2012-13 for both of these teams was supposed to be markedly different. But, as I said, the games are played on the hardwood, not on paper.

If Portland can avoid another big letdown after another big win, they’ll take one more important step in the direction of proving that they’re for real, and that most of the projections were wrong.

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

Timberwovles Starting 5: PG Luke Ridnour, SG Alexey Shved, SF Andrei Kirilenko, PF Derrick Williams, C Nikola Pekovic

How can Portland beat Minnesota? To answer that, look no further than the box score from November 23rd of 2012, the first time these two teams faced off. On that night, the Blazers got 30 points from Wesley Matthews and 28 points from Damian Lillard, with both guys going off from three. Wes was an outstanding 5-of-6; Damian was nearly as good, shooting 4-of-8.

During last night’s broadcast in Memphis, Mike Rice made a keen observation. He said that Portland can play defense, but they can’t win games on their defense only (something Memphis can and does do). To win games on anything like a consistent basis, the Blazers need to score, and to score, they need to hit threes.

With Kevin Love out, Portland is going to want to go inside on Minnesota. They should. But if they want to get the better of this Timberwolves team, they have to make some threes. Shooting well from deep not only takes a ton of pressure off LaMarcus Aldridge, it also opens up the lane for Lillard, Matthews, and Nicolas Batum to attack the rim. The Blazers will probably work inside out on Saturday, but they need to be sure their outside game gets going if they want to win.

What to Watch For

• How Portland starts the game. In Toronto, Portland got down double figures in the first five minutes of the game. They absolutely cannot let that happen again. That means playing smart with the basketball, running their offense, and not letting Minnesota get easy looks to start the game. The T-Wolves are already two strikes down prior to the start of Saturday’s game playing with Rubio and Love, but in the NBA, when teams are backed against the wall, they usually play their absolute best. If the Blazers expect Minnesota to beat themselves Saturday, they will definitely not win.
• Defense. Minnesota is not the defensive team that Memphis is. Portland is going to get looks. It might not be a shoot out like the Knicks game was, but it’s not going to be a grinder like the Grizzlies game was either. If the Blazers can bring a good defensive effort right out of the gate, they’ll put themselves in a strong position to win this game.
• LaMarcus Aldridge. Kevin Love is out Saturday; Zach Randolph was out Friday. LA was going to have a tough back-to-back against two of the his chief All-Star Game rivals. He didn’t exactly go off in Memphis, nobody did really. His match-up Saturday is better than it was Friday. Expect LA to get a lot of looks, and probably a decent amount of points.

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

That is not a happy face on Gerald Wallace. Credit: Steve Dykes-US PRESSWIRE

Saturday I sat near the back of the room where coach Nate McMillan delivers his post game remarks to the media, right next to The Oregonian‘s Jason Quick. After I sat down, Jason turned to me and asked a serious question: Can it get any worse? A serious question, and a good question. And here’s the scary answer, yes, it can get worse. And it probably will get worse, so get ready for it.

I choose personally to err on the side of optimism–feeling generous I projected that the Blazers will get 10 wins in March, if that’s not being blindly optimistic I don’t know what is–but I’m not sure how much even I have left in the tank. Saturday night, Portland got beaten, handily, by a Minnesota Timberwolves team that looked as poised, committed, and fluid as the Blazer looked lazy, sloppy, and almost completely out of sync. I would love to be able to say that Portland let this one get away, that an inferior team came into the Rose Garden and stole a victory. Saturday the best team won. And that team was not the Blazers.

And that’s why it can get worse. There are still 29 games left in this season, seven straight on the road following Monday’s match-up with the worst team in the Western Conference, and Portland is going to have to play them all. If they can’t figure out what is wrong and fix it soon, and by soon I mean yesterday, this team isn’t going to be winning very many of those games.

Saturday’s loss reminded me of something that I think I’ve talked about before. That is that in the NBA the skill level of every team is so high that winning doesn’t come down to who has the better team or the better players. Every roster in the league is full of the best basketball players on the planet. Winning, and doing it consistently, is about being prepared mentally, being focused, having confidence, and most importantly having your head in the game from the first buzzer to the last. The best players in the league don’t take a single play off all season. (Side Bar: Some guys like Mike Beasley, who in my opinion is the second best player on Minnesota’s roster, take whole games off, and that’s what keeps them from getting to the next level in their careers.) The best teams believe they can win every night.

If you watched closely Saturday, you saw one team that was in it from the tip. That would have been the T-Wolves. And one team that was half committed at the start of the game, fully committed in a very impressive second quarter, and living with their head in the clouds in the fourth quarter. It doesn’t matter who your opponent is, that kind of play doesn’t win games.

I don’t really have much else to say, beyond that. As fans, we now get to play the waiting game. Does this team find its way in the next two to three days, get some momentum going on the road, grab a W in a big East Coast city (Boston maybe, and/or New York), and actually start playing like the roster implies it should? Or do they lose on Monday night to the 9-28 New Orleans Hornets and start cleaning house? Of course I prefer the scenario in which the Blazers start playing well, win games, and don’t gut the team. But at least a player fire sale will give us something to talk about.

I have to say, though, it’s probably pretty fun to be a Minnesota Timberwolves fan. Ricky Rubio isn’t amazing, but he’s a solid PG and if he should ever develop a jump shot he might be an All-Star PG. Kevin Love is Kevin Love (sorry I can’t gild the lily any more than that), and Saturday he out-played LaMarcus Aldridge in almost every way one player can out-play another (LA won fouls 6-2 BOOYAH). Nikola Pekovic is a load, and played good defense on LA for stretches. Martell Webster looks like and has the same name as a guy that used to play in Portland but is clearly not the same dude (by that I mean he had a great game, something we didn’t seem from him very often). Rick Adelman might be a top 10 of all time head coach, who always gets geared up for playing his old team. The Wolves have a legit shot at the Playoffs this year, and if they can keep it together their ceiling is top four, not this year, but soon. Wasn’t so long ago people were saying the same thing about the Blazers.

We’re back at it Monday. Rest up. You’re going to need it.

Couple of quick things:

• Portland’s perimeter defense was as bad as it’s been all season. Minnesota went nova from three in the first quarter, hitting eight of ten. In that same quarter, the Blazers went 8-of-10 from the line. Matching threes with free throws is a losing strategy.
• We have reached the point in the season where we all get to throw out what we think Portland should do RE: trades/rebuilding. Here’s my offering. The Blazers are looking at a slew of guys that will be URFAs (Un Restricted Free Agents) in the off-season. Teams are going to come for Gerald Wallace and Jamal Crawford. Crash is a no-brainer, a top six or seven team because a top four by signing him (imagine if you can stomach it Gerald Wallace finishing this season in Oklahoma City). Crawford is a harder sell, for sure, but there are still a lot of teams that see his Sixth Man of the Year Award and his ability to provide instant offense off the bench, and wouldn’t mind having him (think Chicago, a top two team in the East with a bench unit that plays just to not lose leads while Derrick Rose catches his breath). So, here’s my suggestion. Do nothing. Unplug the phones. Send out a league-wide memo that says the Portland Trail Blazers will hear no trade offers, not even if the Lakers are offering Kobe straight up for Luke Babbitt, OK I’d take that one. Play this string out. Let all the Un-Restricted guys walk, take the cap space, make some trades, and rush the Draft. Here’s why. You put together a package to make a trade, it goes through, and now you’re left with another piece to integrate and probably about 20 games to do it. Portland is at loose ends now because they tried to put together a team on the fly to make-up for the face of the franchise hanging up his Jordans. A trade is probably not what makes this team better, and it’s probably not the best way to rebuild, if rebuilding is in fact what the Blazers are going to do. In my book, it’s a win-win. You let these guys try to dig their way out of the hole they got themselves into, and if they do, awesome. If they don’t well, the last time Portland wheeled and dealt on draft day they ended up with a ROY (Rookie of the Year) and four All-Star Game appearances. And this time they don’t need to draft a LaMarcus Aldridge. They’ve already got one. Also, just to make it a win-win-win, by not trading Gerald Wallace or Jamal Crawford or anybody, Portland doesn’t get to be the team that gave up the guy that took another team from almost there to all the way there…again. Does the name Rasheed Wallace mean anything to you?

Box Score

Standings

Dunking With Wolves

Email me: mike.acker1@gmail.com

Twitter: @mikeacker | @ripcityproject