No one wants to hear this right now, but I am going to say it anyway. The Blazers losing at Denver on Monday night is not the end of the world. Frustrating? Yes. Avoidable? Definitely. On-brand? Sadly. But season-defining and catastrophic? Not quite.
At 40-39, the Blazers didn't doom themselves to the 9 / 10 play-in game with this loss, and a win against the Clippers on Friday should still have them in a good spot in the final days of the season. This one did sting extra as the Blazers led by 14 heading into the fourth quarter, though. It was, if nothing else, a reminder that despite some solid progress this season, the Blazers still have lots of work to do and lots of roster holes to plug up before they can challenge top tier teams on a nightly basis. After that loss, the Blazers are 15-32 against teams .500 or better.
That's a rough number, but shouldn't be too shocking. This team beats teams it should beat but struggles against contenders — just like teams often do at this phase of a rebuild.
Rebuilds are seldom linear (the Thunder are a rare exception) and the Blazers, despite some frustrations throughout the season, are still moving in the right direction. Barring a nightmare against Sacramento, the ragtag — and incredibly injured — Blazers will finish with a .500 record for the first time in five years.
Blazers are on the right track, but struggle against tough competition
Sometimes a team plays so well without key players that when things go poorly, we forget those players were absent in the first place. That's what's happened with Shaedon Sharpe and Jerami Grant being on the mend right now; I'm not making an excuse for the specific loss on Monday. No matter who's on the floor, being outscored by 14 points in the fourth quarter just can't happen, and that loss doens't do much to disspell the idea the Blazers can't beat good teams.
But after the frustration wears off, the Blazers lost an overtime game on the road without two of their three top scorers to a championship contender they notoriously match up poorly with. Be mad at that game — it's more than warranted. But I see it as a bad loss in a stretch of otherwise good basketball, including a win at Los Angeles just a few days ago.
New owner Tom Dundon made it clear that he expects high-level basketball, so this team should be held to a high standard. They shouldn't be excused for losses like this, from Tiago Splitter to the players themselves. As the season winds down, it feels like the Blazers are taking two steps forward and one step back. Monday's loss felt like a big one step, to be fair.