The Portland Trail Blazers have had a rough season in a lot of ways, but is there any excuse for not being able to make layups?
The Portland Trail Blazers rank an abysmal last in the league when it comes to finishing at the rim. If you looked down the roster you would probably guess this team would be somewhere in the middle when it came to finishing around the rim, but as you break down the individual players, you see the deficiencies that stopped this squad getting easy buckets this year.
Being able to get layups and dunks is such a massive part of any NBA team’s offense. A strong shooting team needs to have a good amount of layups and dunks thrown in to keep the defense honest. If defenses see that certain players can’t attack the basket then they are able to closeout more effectively to shooters, meaning the shooters have their shots contested more often.
Breaking it down further, there are numerous players who struggle to finish at the rim that are contributing to this number.
FIrst, is Carmelo Anthony. Unfortunately, Melo is one of the worst finishers at the rim for his position this season. Sitting at a measly 53 percent this season, he is in the bottom 6 percent of bigs when it comes to finishing at the rim. Melo has added value on the court for the Blazers this season, but it looks like the strong finishing around the rim of his younger years may have abandoned him.
Next come CJ McCollum and Gary Trent Jr. They are at 54 and 53 percent . McCollum has never been a great finisher at the rim, and though this the number of 54 seems low, it’s right around his career average. He is 28 and there is a good chance his rim finishing doesn’t improve beyond this. This rate of finishing at the rim sits CJ in the bottom third in the league. The return of Jusuf Nurkic and his great screen setting could help CJ potentially though.
In Trent’s case, he is still very young and though he has a similar rate to McCollum, he will probably improve due to being four inches taller with nice long arms. His transition game has been a bit messy this year as he struggles a little with decision-making in the open court. If we were to fast forward two years, there’s a good chance he becomes a plus finisher at the rim. Let’s hope that improvement starts now, with some strong finishing to close out the season.
The last two players who are around or below league average are Damian Lillard and Anfernee Simons. We won’t criticize Dame, as even though he is only around league average, he gets to the line a lot, and has also increased to 58 percent this year. He will also benefit from the return of Nurk and his screens.
Simons though, considering his quickness and athleticism, needs to be better around the rim. His mark of 58 percent is average for a wing player. Simons has all the tools to be able to finish at the rim, and needs to be able to do this efficiently if he wants to stay on the court. As he isn’t a good defender then his offensive game needs to come on in leaps and bounds.
The Blazers have never been a big ball movement team so we can’t blame the system for this poor finishing. Being undersized definitely doesn’t help though. Missing our starting three, four and five who all have great positional size has meant that people are playing out of position and are matched up against bigger defenders.
As stated above, the return of Nurkic and then seven-footer Zach Collins should help with screening and finishing at the rim. If more screen actions are run to get guys going down hill, maybe this number will improve. Nurkic will help the ball movement too though. His passing is likely to get more guys open looks on back door cuts.
Rim finishing needs to be a focus to finish the year. With an important stretch of away games coming up, this team needs easy buckets.