Portland Trail Blazers: 3 takeaways from the season-opening loss to the Utah Jazz

No. 2: A too-little, too-late effort from the second unit

Despite this being a home-opener loss for the Portland Trail Blazers, the wound doesn’t cut as deeply, with home court advantage meaning significantly less than it once did without the benefit of a raucous Moda Center crowd.

The flip side of that is that Portland is going to get creative about how it generates its energy and self-motivation, a problem that plagued this team in the preseason.

One tried and true way to light that spark is to have a talented Sixth Man (or deep bench) that can create offense in a hurry.

The Portland Trail Blazers have that in theory, with Carmelo Anthony and Gary Trent Jr., both of which being capable of lighting up the scoreboard in a hurry.

One has to think that having the two of them having more success in that first half could have made a difference on the other end of the floor, when Portland desperately needed stops to cut into the deficit.

Anthony’s game comes to mind. He remained consistent, finishing the game with 15 points on 5-of-12 from the field. The only issue is that all five of those field goals came in the second half, with Portland facing an uphill battle.

Despite what felt like an abnormal amount of post-ups and isolations, Anthony had a well-played, physical game. One just has to wonder how differently the game would have gone if the second unit could have offered a little bit more of a pick-me-up in that first half, and translated that into two-way energy and success.

With the exception of Enes Kanter, consistency was difficult to find in the opening 24 minutes.

With the game all but decided, Portland tallied on a few garbage bench points. The decision to wait to play Harry Giles III until the waning minutes is a different discussion for a different day. But in creating synonyms for his game, “energy” immediately comes to mind. He would have been a nice play earlier.