Since the Portland Trail Blazers made the Western Conference Finals in 2019, the team’s defense has been viewed by many as their greatest weakness—the most glaringly obvious thing holding them back from true title contention. While it’s absolutely true that the Blazers must improve upon last year’s 29th ranked defense if they want to win a championship, it would be imprudent for Neil Olshey and Chauncey Billups to look at last year’s team’s second-ranked offense, bump fists and go about their jobs thinking that the only changes that need to be made are on the defensive end of the floor.
Billups said as much in his introductory press conference at the end of June when asked about the unrealized potential on the roster:
"“I think we can be even better offensively with more ball movement, different schemes, different plays, executing better. Not having to have Dame and C.J. bail you out with those [tough] shots that they can make all the time. Having some more continuity. Not only ball movement but player movement.”"
Billups also spoke highly of Jusuf Nurkic and the variety of ways he can be used both as a scorer and as a playmaker.
The Portland Trail Blazers finished with the second highest rated offense in the league last season, but is there room to improve?
Nobody is going to argue that the Blazers offense wasn’t effective during last year’s regular season. The issue to me, lies in how the Blazers got there. Below I included a breakdown of the kinds of plays the Blazers ran last season, the team’s efficiency (points per possession) when running those plays, and where the Blazers ranked in the category in respect to the other 29 teams in the NBA. These statistics were obtained from nba.com.
Blazers Play Type Breakdown pic.twitter.com/p1QCkMSRN9
— Hassan Ladiwala (@ladiwala_hassan) July 28, 2021
Looking at the chart, you can see that the Blazers were extremely effective running isolations (1.06 PPP) and screens (1 PPP) for their ball-handlers, ranking as the most efficient team in the league when running these plays. They ran these plays at a much higher rate than the rest of the league, catering to players like Damian Lillard, CJ McCollum and Carmelo Anthony’s strengths as off-the-dribble scorers. However, if you take a look at the other play types, their efficiency and the frequency at which Portland ran them relative to the rest of the league, you can start to understand what Coach Billups was talking about in regard to the “unrealized potential” on the roster.