Trail Blazers win, do more than one good thing at a time: Morning Blazer
Welcome to the TGIFATBW (Thank God It’s Friday And The Blazers Won) edition of your Morning Blazer. All is well in Rip City-ville. But how long will it last? As usual, that depends on the “Beast.”
The Trail Blazers beat the Indiana Pacers Thursday night, 100-86. Although they didn’t shoot all that well, it was one of the team’s best performances of the season.
It was also one of Jusuf Nurkic’s best performances. The Trail Blazers’ big man scored 19 points and hauled in 17 rebounds. And he was 8-of-14 from the field.
This Pacers team is no slouch; they’re 24-21 and sixth in the Western Conference. Under head coach Nate McMillan, they’ve installed an offense that piles up points; a lot of those points come via the three ball.
In fact, at 38.4 percent, the Pacers are behind only the Golden State Warriors in three-point shooting percentage.
But the Trail Blazers stifled ’em.
Trail Blazers shut down the Pacers
Granted, the Pacers were playing without Myles Turner, sidelined with a right elbow sprain. Still, the kind of defense Portland played Thursday would shut down a good many teams, with or without their starting centers.
Portland smothered the Pacers’ shooting attack with aggressive, harassing defense. Indiana made just 7-of-26 three pointers (29.9 percent).
Good Defense, Bad Offense
Against the Pacers, the Trail Blazers played just the kind of defense that vaulted them into the upper echelon of team defenses for most of the season.
But something changed after New Year’s Day.
The Trail Blazers’ defense got worse.
It was just the kind of frustrating switcheroo that’s plagued the Trail Blazers and their fans all season. Here at the RCP, we started to wonder if the 2017-2018 Trail Blazers would ever be good at more than one thing at a time.
Glimpses of Excellence
OK, so we’ve been a little snarky. But snark is what helps us keep our sanity.
We’ve all seen short, tantalizing glimpses of what this Trail Blazers team can be if all its parts are operating with high-octane efficiency.
It’s frustrating to catch only glimpses of excellence. We’re critical of the Trail Blazers because we know they can play better. We’re snarky because we’re frustrated.
Of course, the Trail Blazers can be good at more than one thing (offense and defense) at a time. We’ve seen it! (The way Kevin Costner saw dry land in “Waterworld”!)
What might this team look like if it could put together complete games with more consistency?
As we’ve written before, we’ll never know unless Jusuf Nurkic brings it every night the way he brought it Thursday against the Pacers.
Depends on Nurk
Damian Lillard says the Nurkic we saw Thursday against Indiana “is what we need. … He was just really locked in.”
Next: Trail Blazers defeat Pacers 100-86, win fifth straight at home
Maybe getting quote-unquote “benched” during the first half of the Trail Blazers’ Tuesday night victory against the Phoenix Suns woke up the “Beast.”
Problem is, we’ve seen the “Beast” wake up a lot this season — and then go right back to snoozin’ — far too many times to put much faith in any one performance.
Let’s see Nurkic “locked in” for the rest of the month. Then Rip City can start to feel really hopeful.