How the Portland Trail Blazers can improve their offense next season

The Blazers lack of ball movement lies at the heart of their offensive issues.

Under Terry Stotts, Portland was notorious for being one of the worst ball-movement teams in the league. The team finished 24th or lower in passes per game in each of the past six seasons, culminating in two straight seasons (2019-20 and 2020-21) where they ranked dead last in both passes and assists per game.

Did you ever hear a television announcer mention that the Blazers averaged the fewest turnovers per game last season? It’s one my least favorite statistics, because it gives the false impression that the Blazers are much more careful with the ball than they really are. In fact, their 4.57 percent turnover-to-pass ratio is about league-average. This team just doesn’t pass the ball a lot. This would explain their lack of spot-up shooting and cut attempts, both of which are created by the player with the ball drawing the defense’s attention, then passing the ball to an open teammate.

Last year, a few too many of the Blazers offensive possessions looked like this:

this:

or this:

Notice the lack of ball movement in the first two clips and then the amount of effort Lillard has to expend to get off a shot in the third clip. The problem with the Blazers running such a high amount of isolations and ball-screens is that it puts a lot of pressure on the team’s primary shot-makers (i.e. Damian Lillard, C.J. McCollum, and to a lesser extent, Carmelo Anthony) to take and make difficult shots like these on a routine basis in order to keep the offense humming. Additionally, when the Blazers stars are matched up against high-level defenders, these shots become much harder to make as evidenced by the Blazers 16-22 record against teams with win percentages of .500 or better.

The main goal for the Blazers should be to try and reduce the offensive burden placed on Damian Lillard. Just look at the number of isolation plays he has run relative to the rest of the league over his career. He’s consistently been asked to run one of the highest number of isolation attempts in the league.

Last season, Lillard ran more isolation possessions (331) than both Carmelo Anthony and CJ McCollum (who ranked second and third on the team in isolation possessions) combined. He ran more isolation possessions per game than players like Giannis Antetokounmpo, LeBron James, and Kawhi Leonard. For a player with Lillard’s physical profile, to run that many isolation plays must take an incredible physical toll. It makes it that much more draining than that of the 26 players who ran at least 150 isolation possessions over the course of the regular season. Lillard’s 1.11 PPP was the second most efficient out of everyone, despite him running the third most isolation plays in the entire league.

If you look at his usage and efficiency as the PnR ball-handler, you’ll find a similarly eye-popping number of possessions run for Lillard (803) alongside a pristine conversion rate (1.07 PPP) which ranks as the highest efficiency out of any guard who ran at least 500 pick and roll possessions last season.

Yet despite the heroics of Damian Lillard, the Blazers have always struggled to establish themselves as among the elite teams in the Western Conference. Asking Lillard to do more simply isn’t an option anymore, as he’s already pushing his body to its limit trying to shoulder his current burden.

For this reason, the biggest change I expect to see made to the Blazers offense next season is an increase in ball movement and off-ball player movement, two areas highlighted by Billups in his introductory press conference. The Blazers need to figure out how to make Lillard effective when he doesn’t have the ball in his hands, plain and simple.

It may sound radical at first, but so did Phil Jackson taking the ball out of Michael Jordan’s hands back in 1989, or Steve Kerr choosing to dramatically reduce the number of isolation plays run for Stephen Curry when he took over the Warriors job in 2014. The 2013-14 Warriors were last in the league in passing, just like last year’s Blazers, before Steve Kerr came in and implemented the fluid, read-and-react offense that the Warriors are now known for. I know that Damian Lillard is a scorer, and I’m not asking him to shoot less or even to pass more, but just to not work as hard for his shots, so that he can save his legs for when it really matters.

The Blazers don’t have to turn into the Warriors overnight, but by relying less on Lillard creating magic out of thin air and more on their role players making the right basketball play, I believe that the Trail Blazers offense can unlock some of that “untapped potential” Billups had talked about and become even more lethal than they were last year.