The Portland Trail Blazers poor form continued Tuesday night, as they fell to the Kings 99-107.
The tide will simply not turn for the Portland Trail Blazers right now. Following an OT win vs the Hawks two nights ago, many expected this to kickstart the Blazers’ season, but once again, Portland underperformed. They were second best against a Kings team missing De’Aaron Fox, and fell by eight points.
It is a case of one step forward and two steps back for Portland currently. They cannot seem to get anything going, and tonight was no different. Sacramento were equally as poor for much of the contest, but pulled away in the third quarter, due to Portland’s poor perimeter defense, and lack of imagination on the offensive end.
The Trail Blazers shot 44 percent from the field, hitting just 27 percent of their threes, and 76 percent of their free throws. They also had 17 turnovers in what was a scrappy encounter, I certainly experienced little joy in watching this particular game. The Blazers were outscored 35-21 in the 3rd quarter, and this proved to be the difference, as despite a late game flourish, they fell short. Damian Lillard led the scoring with 27 points, whilst CJ McCollum had 24 points of his own.
Here are three takeaways from yet another underwhelming Portland performance.
Handling the ball
Two stats that stuck out to me tonight, after the first half, the Trail Blazers had 11 turnovers, and seven assists. Tonight’s display of taking care of the ball was simply appalling; it wasn’t lacking quality, it seemed lazy and inattentive. Some of it isn’t even coachable, it’s basic stuff. Turnovers were coming from bad decisions, a lack of effort and silly fouls.
They finished with 17 turnovers, and these turnovers led to 18 Sacramento points. Forget the offensive struggles, these are basic things Portland needs to take care of if they’re going to lift themselves out of this rut.
The other stat is perhaps more worrying, however. The Blazers currently sit bottom the assists per game table, averaging just 17.2 through the first 11 games. Tonight was no different, as they combined for 15 assists as a team, a number that simply will not fly.
The Blazers are never top of this list even when they’re playing well, but 15 assists (vs a poor Sacramento team) is simply unacceptable. Portland play a lot of iso ball, as Dame and CJ usually excel in this scenario, but it’s too much right now. The ball is not moving, and the Blazers are relying on Dame to do it all on his own, or CJ to run the clock down, and take one of his contested mid-ranges. When the shots are falling, it looks great, but right now the Blazers need team basketball, especially with role players struggling to hit shots.
Dame was passive throughout
Lillard hasn’t done much wrong this season, as he’s started off averaging a career high in points (33.0), which is good for second in the league. For most of the season so far, the Blazers have seemed to rely on Dame to go nuclear late in the game to get them over the line, and tonight needed no different.
However, the point guard took just 10 shots, in what was a weirdly passive game for Lillard. Usually, he understands when the Blazers need him to simply take over, but he didn’t seem to want to. He deferred to CJ in others too much in my eyes. He didn’t take a shot in the final three minutes of action, and even before this, Lillard was passive.
It wasn’t as if he was struggling, Lillard was 6-10 from the floor tonight. Perhaps he was trying to feed CJ the ball in an attempt to get the SG back to his old scoring ways; McCollum was an improvement tonight, going 11-21 for 24 points. Or perhaps Dame has realized that his role players will need to step up at some point, and wanted to give them the platform to do so.
Whatever the reason, the way Portland are playing right now, it looks as if Dame is going to have to continue being aggressive, and continue to drag the Blazers to wins. Him shooting 10 times is simply not enough to get them over the line, especially if the majority of the roster is apparently refusing to hit shots.
Simons struggles
Anfernee Simons struggled big-time tonight, going just 2-11 from the field for 5 points. The second-year pro has had an excellent start to the season, and is already a permanent fixture in the Blazers crunch time line-up; this poor shooting performance proved just how important he is to the offense right now.
Outside of Lillard, Simons has probably been Portland’s second best offensive performer, at least in terms of consistency. Due to the lack of production from most of the Blazers roster, Simons is now being relied on, which is a big ask for someone who started playing regular NBA minutes just 11 games ago. The Blazers apparently afford him to have an off-night, which is not only difficult for Anfernee, but is also a pretty worrying outlook for the Portland Trail Blazers.
If there contingency plan is Anfernee Simons to pull them out of a hole, the ceiling won’t stand too high for this season. Aside from waiting on injured players to return, Portland needs more from it’s role players, this ship could sink extremely quickly if there isn’t a change soon.