Portland Trail Blazers: Once a source of pride, the bench has become an Achilles’ heel

What comes next?

No doubt, the Blazers should be keeping their minds open to any kind of move that could improve the team before the February trade deadline. The team has looked sluggish on defense and stagnant offensively. They need a boost.

In the short term, however, I think we’ll see a lot more staggering of Lillard and McCollum to help keep this second-unit afloat. Although Head Coach Terry Stotts appeared to want to play them more often together, if the bench continues to squander leads, he may have no choice.

In the Media Day presser, Neil Olshey talked about not wanting to overreact to their four-game sweep to the New Orleans Pelicans. But now, as this new season trudges on, I can’t help but feel that’s exactly what the Blazers did. They added knockdown shooters to try and compensate for the double teams on Lillard, giving him weapons to kick out to and force defense to play him more honestly. However, Stauskas and Curry can’t seem to be those weapons, and now they miss the consistency of Ed Davis. Rather than add more versatile players that could fit in with their best three players, the Blazers opted to sign and retain their specialists. So far, it’s led to a streaky regular season.

Hopefully Collins gets back on track and Leonard chucks up more three-pointers. Either or both of those shifts could greatly benefit Portland.

Big picture, though, I think they need some sort of roster change.

It’ll only be so long the Blazers can keep running back the same group until they are labeled as insane.