Portland Trail Blazers: 3 takeaways from potential starting lineup leak

No. 3: Does rust have an expiration date?

When the Portland Trail Blazers return to action on Jul. 31 against Memphis, a grand total of 505 days will have passed since the quartet of Lillard, McCollum, Collins and Nurkić have shared the floor together. Let that sink in for a minute.

It certainly helps the sleeping at night in knowing that opposing teams will be facing a similar hurdle, given the 3½ month layoff in between March and July. But a whole year?

We’ve grown to know what these players look like on paper and in theory, but what actual on-court chemistry has been built? To play devil’s advocate, it will much easier to simulate an in-game setting now, since fans aren’t going to be present regardless.

But, the Trail Blazers won’t be afforded much time to iron out kinks — not with fellow cover star Zion Williamson hoping to fulfill the NBA’s dream of the New Orleans Pelicans leapfrogging Portland for the final spot in the play-in tournament.

We’ve alternated in between positives and negatives. Here’s one statistic that really instills hope: in 2018-19, the Lillard-McCollum-Collins-Nurkic grouping netted a +15.43 net rating (granted, just 44 minutes of play). The on-off swing was an ungodly +38.28.

That means that we’ve got irrefutable film that, even in limited time, this group can succeed together. And Anthony should be a hand-in-glove fit for their offensive priorities. But in the back of one’s mind, it’s worth wondering:

What other team has two returning starters to usher back in over the NBA’s return?

It all figures to make for a fun NBA subplot. Thankfully for us, we’ll only have to weigh on the hypotheticals for another 29 y̶e̶a̶r̶s̶ days.