Portland Trail Blazers Roundtable: Midseason Review

Describe the Team’s Biggest Strength and Weakness

Ashlin: The team’s biggest strength is Damian Lillard. Lillard is easily a top 10 player in the NBA and is one of the most clutch superstars in the game. The Blazers can always count on Lillard to score at least 20 points. More importantly, he can hit a big shot whenever the team needs it.

It is strange that a team with great chemistry and roster continuity struggles with consistency which is their biggest weakness. We have seen the Blazers go on winning streaks and pick up wins over the Raptors, Warriors, and Bucks. We also saw them suffer through a brutal slump and get blown out by the Utah Jazz twice.

Patrick: The team’s biggest strength looks to be the most cliche – their cohesion. So many stories have come out this year about this team really enjoying each other as more than just basketball players and co-workers. And I think it is this cohesion that allows Head Coach Terry Stotts to so easily contort the rotation based on who is playing well and who deserves a chance. He is willing to experiment with guys, like Caleb Swanigan who got some run following a strong performance after Meyers Leonard struggled early, or try to get others in rhythm, like when he started a mediocre Seth Curry in place of an injured CJ McCollum. I am not in the locker room, but I can imagine the group’s chemistry allows these sorts of competitions for minutes and the giving of them to those who need it as a respectful, open environment rather than one that’s mean-spirited. The Blazers are afforded the opportunity to experiment and search for their ceiling because of their cohesion… let’s just hope they find that ceiling before it’s too late.

The team’s biggest weakness is traveling. The group is 8-10 on the road, which isn’t awful, but only Maurice Harkless (0.8), McCollum (0.8), and Nurkic (1.8) possess positive plus-minuses in away games. The bench, particularly, has been disastrous outside of the Moda Center, especially when Stotts has opted to go for his true five-man second-unit. Most notably, that group gave up huge early leads in back-to-back games in Houston and Memphis a few weeks ago. They get stagnant; nobody in that group has emerged as a knockdown shooter; everyone except Zach Collins is a below average defender. There’s plenty to worry about with this unit, even if they did perform so well to begin the year. All these problems only get amplified on the road.

Gutbrod: The biggest strength of the Blazers thus far would have to be the team’s chemistry. When you have a group as close as this Blazers squad it becomes easier to manage the peaks and valleys of an NBA season. The impact of the team’s chemistry can be seen in their 24-17 record despite having some obvious imbalances at certain spots in the rotation.

The biggest weakness at the halfway mark of the 2018-19 season has to be the forward positions. Harkless and Aminu regularly score less than 10 points combined as starters. Layman, despite showing flashes of usefulness, is just now gaining ground in the rotation, and Zach Collins remains a wait-and-see project. Quite frankly the Blazers are one upgrade at forward away from being a legitimate threat in the West.

Moore: The biggest strength remains the Blazers “Big 3,” although it’s still a work in progress. Damian Lillard is an All-Star. McCollum could potentially be one, although not this season. Plus, Jusuf Nurkic has been dominant. The Blazers’ biggest weakness continues to be its second unit, which hasn’t delivered the type of consistency needed to elevate this team into the upper tier of a tough and bruising Western Conference.

Piper: The biggest strength so far is that we have a Damian Lillard. Early in the season, you could say the offense in general as we were top 5 in scoring much of the early season, but now that we’ve regressed to the middle of the pack in most offensive categories it’s simply just Damian Lillard. He is top ten in scoring and can take over a game at will, so our biggest strength is the fact that a majority of the time the best player on the floor is on our side.

Our biggest weakness is defense. Plain and simple. I’m not even going to go in depth about the defense. It’s mediocre at best and atrocious at worst.