Portland Trail Blazers: 3 takeaways from the blowout win over Houston

The Portland Trail Blazers flew past the Houston Rockets, 104-85. Here are three takeaways from the game.

The Portland Trail Blazers defeated the James Harden-less Houston Rockets, 104-85. They improve to 5-2 for the year.

After a tight first quarter, Portland pushed out ahead with a double-digit lead at halftime and never looked back. At one point, they led the game by 28 points.

Here are three takeaways from the Blazers blowout over the Rockets.

Zach Collins is coming alive defensively.

Throughout this NBA regular season, Zach Collins has emerged as a solid defensive player. Tonight, his emergence continued.

Collins worked tirelessly to effect shots at the rim and disrupt Houston’s offense with his length and tenacity regardless of who he faced. In one instance during the second quarter, Collins was a factor in several defensive stops in a row.

This mentality and his ability are reasons why Damian Lillard spoke earlier this week in Indianapolis about Collins’s potential as a Defensive Player of the Year. Lillard told Jamie Hudson of NBC Sports Northwest:

"“[…] he’s blocking shots and deflecting passes and rebounding the ball the way he’s doing it, I think he has potential to be defensive player of the year.”"

Coming into the game, Collins averaged 11.8 points, 4.8 rebounds, and two blocks.

He finished tonight with nine points, four rebounds, and two blocks. If this effort and production continues, Collins will be rewarded. Maybe not with a Defensive Player of the Year trophy. But some more minutes could certainly be in his future.

The Blazers are a turnover-prone team.

I feel I put a point in about Portland’s turnovers in almost every “takeaways” piece. But they really are a problem with this group.

The group currently ranks 18th in the league for turnovers (1st being the least turnovers) with 14.5 per game. By halftime of tonight’s game, the Blazers had already coughed the ball up 10 times.

They finished with 17 turnovers in all.

A fair share of these mistakes were unforced. One came off an Evan Turner pass that found no one and gently bounced out of bounds. Another came off a cross-court Jusuf Nurkic pass that got easily picked off by Carmelo Anthony.

The Blazers will need to continue trying to improve their communication as a unit.

Portland’s big three takes care of business.

The Blazers big three took care of business against a shorthanded Rockets team. When Harden is sitting out, you’ve got to win, and that’s exactly what Lillard, McCollum, and Nurkic did.

Lillard tied for a game-high in points with Nurkic at 22. Lillard also added seven assists while Nurkic added 10 rebounds. McCollum had 19 points and four rebounds.

The group shot a very efficient 21/33 combined.

Nurkic’s ability to attack smaller matchups in post-ups and Lillard and McCollum’s explosion in the third helped put this game away early.

The Portland Trail Blazers play their next game against the New Orleans Pelicans on November 1 at 7:30 P.S.T.