Portland Trail Blazers Roundtable: Analyzing the Current State of the Team and What to do Moving Forward

Question 2: What Are Your Takeaways From the Three-Game Losing Streak?

Ashlin: The Blazers shot their way out of those games. The Bucks game is a perfect example of that. Portland shot only 22.2% from three that game. Instead of being patient and trusting their teammates, Lillard forced shots and the players got in their own head. As I previously, Stotts could simply make some adjustments to remedy games like this. It would be even better if the front office could acquire a wing who could take some of the scoring pressure off of the backcourt.

Patrick: It’s simple, but the Blazers need to shoot better. Over the last few games, they’re shooting 25% from deep.
They’ve also looked lackluster on defense, and when things aren’t going well offensively, Dame and CJ have a tendency to press – diving into the lane with no real semblance of a plan only to dish out a weak kick-out that’s more often deflected than received.

Shameless self-promotion: Check out my latest article about the losing streak woes and some possible solutions for them!

Gutbrod: The losing streak would not bother me as much if the team had not also lost five of their last seven games. Each of the teams Portland has fallen to in the three-game skid are highly talented teams. Of course, Portland, as a playoff team, is supposed to be able to hang with such teams.

The biggest takeaway has to be the utter mediocrity of the Blazers wing/forward play. Against the Clippers, starting forwards Maurice Harkless and Al-Farouq Aminu scored a combined total of four points. Their Clipper counterparts, Tobias Harris and Danilo Gallinari, scored 51. The Clippers game was not the first time this season that the two starting forwards have combined for less than 10 points in a game, either. It happened multiple times before Harkless returned from injury as Jake Layman was starting. The team won’t ever climb out of the first round with that little production from 40% of its starting five.

Moore: I’m less concerned with the (admittedly historic) loss in Milwaukee and the (not unexpected) beatdown against Golden State than I am with the lackluster performance I saw from the Blazers in their Sunday loss — at home! — to the Clippers. Nurkic sat out the second half of that game, so that definitely had an impact. But the truth is, the Clippers looked better, faster and played a hounding style of defense that I would love to see Portland try to emulate. As has often been the case for this Portland team, when there’s a lot of Dame and CJ (who combined for 48 points) and not enough of anybody else — well, it just ain’t good enough. The Blazers will never be more than a middle-tier Western Conference team if they don’t get a consistently high level of play from someone other than their two stars.

Piper: Their last 3 have been tough games so no reason to worry too much about it, but unless the defense drastically improves, the Blazers can’t expect to win many games averaging 99 points per game like they have over the last 3. Before the 3 games losing streak they were averaging 115 points per game and were 12-5 at the top of the western conference, so let’s hope they were just going through a rough shooting stretch as of late.