Rip City basks in the afterglow of a big-time victory: Morning Blazer
What a win! Ahh, let’s take a moment — shall we? — to savor it. To rejoice in the knowledge that the Trail Blazers can be a great team, even if not every piece falls into place at the right time.
Howdy-hi there, friends and neighbors. And welcome to the “Did You See It? I Mean, Did you See It?” edition of your Morning Blazer. We’re all smiles this morning because the Trail Blazers beat the best team in the world Wednesday.
Led by All-Star Damian Lillard’s 44 points, the Trail Blazers held off the typically relentless Golden State Warriors, beating the defending champions 123-117 at the Moda Center.
Warriors vs. Trail Blazers
One of the first things you notice when perusing the box score from the Warriors-Trail Blazers game is the huge difference in points between each team’s leading scorer(s) and the rest of their squads.
For Golden State, Kevin Durant had 50 points; no other Warriors player had more than 17.
Portland’s box score is a little more balanced, but it’s still noteworthy because of what it says about the importance of Jusuf Nurkic to this team’s success.
Lillard poured in 44, while CJ McCollum had 29 — and actually took one more shot than Lillard. Nurkic, whose mystery ailment seems to have disappeared by game time, had 17 points to go with 13 rebounds.
But after that, the Blazers’ drop-off in offensive production is almost as drastic as the Warriors’; aside from Portland’s “Big Three,” no Trail Blazer scored more than nine points.
What’s It All Mean?
What it means is that Portland’s “Big Three,” which has been under construction for months now, actually looked like a “Big Three”! When Lillard, McCollum and Nurkic are performing, the Trail Blazers are hard to beat — even if the rest of the team struggles on the offensive side of the floor.
Even if they’re playing the best basketball team in the world.
It’s no great revelation to say that the linchpin to this type of success is Nurkic. We’ve written about this at great length. All season. As Nurk goes, so go the Portland Trail Blazers.
Rip City knows what to expect from Lillard and McCollum. And Rip City knows what it needs from Nurkic. But far too often this season, he’s simply disappeared. Sometimes it happens right in the middle of a game.
Beast
I don’t know what ails Jusuf Nurkic. I can’t peek into his mind and decipher what it is that makes him tick, or why he seems like a Beast one minute and the Least the next.
What I do know is that the Portland Trail Blazers — for all the firepower generated by Lillard and McCollum — are going nowhere fast unless we continue to see this type of performance from Nurkic.
Next: Suddenly silent Jusuf Nurkic no good for Portland Trail Blazers
Night in and night out.
Every minute of every game.
When will that type of consistency take hold?
Rip City hopes it’s sooner rather than later.
Because, as we saw on Wednesday night inside the happy and rollicking Moda Center, when the Blazers’ “Big Three” are on top of their games, they can beat anybody.