While the Portland Trail Blazers have stressed that they do not want to overreact to their first round playoff sweep, they also do not want to become complacent. Through Media Day and the first day of training camp, the team spoke about updating their offense.
The Portland Trail Blazers appear confident in themselves and their system as they enter this upcoming year. Even after a disappointing first round exit to the New Orleans Pelicans, Rip City has instead chosen to focus on the impressive regular season performance that got them to the third-seed in the West.
However, this does not mean the team wants to run everything back.
While their defense ranked 8th in the league last season, their offense was less impressive – even with an elite backcourt in Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum. One lackluster area in particular was the fact the team ranked last in assists.
In GM Neil Olshey’s Media Day interview, he mentioned that the team seemed too focused on defense last year. And that their lack of big-time shooters placed pressure on guys like Dame, CJ, and Jusuf Nurkic to produce.
This concern explains Portland’s acquisitions of Seth Curry and Nik Stauskas this offseason. They shot 42.5 and 40.0 percent from beyond the arc in their most recent seasons, a step above Shabazz Napier and Pat Connaughton who were 37.6 and 35.2 percent three-point shooters.
In an Oregon Live article, Joe Freeman said that the Blazers would run less post-ups and shoot more threes. And in Head Coach Terry Stotts’s Media Day presser, he made it seem like these long-range opportunities would be created through better ball movement. With the ball continuously zipping around, Portland will undoubtedly rack up greater assist totals.
The Blazers also worked to update their playbook to better utilize their new players’ skillsets. Freeman wrote:
"Stotts and his staff spent time this summer watching video of opposing NBA teams and even European clubs, looking for concepts and actions to steal and cater to their personnel."
Though the Blazers’ roster changes have been minimal this season, the team feels they must update their offense to maximize their new players’ abilities and improve the weakest parts of their offense – namely their lack of ball movement.
Following the first day of training camp, Lillard touched on these updates to the offense:
"“… I think there’s been a lot more collaboration as far as things that we can do that would benefit us that we don’t do a lot of. Things that we could do better that would be helpful to the team. Just a lot more communication as far as how we can help ourselves and the team. You know? As opposed to: All right, let’s just high pick-and-roll. You know, just other ways for us to be productive.”"
His quote here speaks to a more creative and collaborative approach to the way the Blazers will run their offense this coming year. No longer do they want to use Lillard’s and McCollum’s elite scoring as a crutch and have the ball stick to them in repetitive pick-and-roll sets.
While the changes to Portland’s offense will not be massive – Stotts estimated only 20 percent would be new – they should ultimately push the Blazers to play better team-basketball.