Trail Blazers can get more out of Norman Powell and Larry Nance Jr.
By Andy Quach
The Portland Trail Blazers need to get Norman Powell the ball more
Norman Powell has been an incredible addition for the Portland Trail Blazers, but he has much more to offer than what they’ve been getting from him so far.
Despite being third on the squad in minutes at 29.1 per game, Norm is only sixth in touches at 28.6. This puts him behind Damian Lillard, CJ McCollum, Jusuf Nurkic, Anfernee Simons, and Robert Covington, according to NBA.com.
The Blazers are a guard-heavy team and like to run their offense through the high post at times, so the three guards and Nurk make sense, but there’s absolutely no reason that RoCo should be touching the ball more than Norm. It’s actually criminal that Cov averages over 10 touches more per game than Powell.
Norm is taking full advantage of the limited opportunities that he’s been given, averaging a shade under 17 points per game, while shooting 50 percent from the field, 44 from deep, and 80 at the stripe.
Of players that take less than 12 shots a night, Powell is the league leader in scoring.
There’s simply no reason to not put the ball in Powell’s hands more, especially since he’s one of the few Blazers capable of creating good looks for himself at the rim like this.
Norm is currently averaging just 11.7 field goal attempts per game. In his Portland career, when he takes more than 11 shots in a game, he averages 20.3 points, while slashing 48/40/86. The Blazers can get a lot more consistent offense from him, if they get him the rock more regularly.