The Portland Trail Blazers lost a 103-101 thriller to the Charlotte Hornets on Tuesday night. I had the privilege of being in attendance at the Moda Center for the game, as it was also Blazer’s Edge Night, the evening when we sent 2617 children, youth, and chaperones from the Portland area to see the Blazers play in person.
I’m not gonna lie. I walked almost two miles from my hotel to a MAX line to get to the arena at 2:00 this afternoon to go on the radio for a couple hours with Rip City Radio 620
host Chad Doing. I love those moments. It always goes by too quickly. Then there was another radio spot, the game, then riding MAX back in the dark and walking two more miles in the mixed rain and slush to my hotel room. I’m a little tired! (And desperately in need of a tutorial on how to use ridesharing, I guess.) But the buzz from the evening hasn’t left, so here are a few observations from the event and the game. You always see things differently in person. Maybe some of these will be new and relevant!
Deni at Point
I’m calling this right now. As long as he’s on the team, Deni Avdija needs to be the point guard. Things go better for him and his teammates when he runs the show. He’s the spiritual captain of the squad already, also its leading scorer right now. Taking the reins is a natural step. His vision and passing just keep getting better. Frankly, the team plays differently when Deni has the ball up top than they do with anybody else, even Jrue Holiday. The Blazers get better looks too.
I know Portland has approximately 56 true point guards right now. I’m not trying to insinuate what will, or should, happen with any of them. But I am saying that this is almost certainly Deni’s best destiny. The way the team is built now, that also makes it the Blazers’ best destiny.
Deni at point. Book it.
The Trials of Scoot
During that aforementioned radio show, we talked quite a bit about Scoot Henderson. I opined that three-point shooting was not optional for him, but essential. Not only does it make him a better scorer, it pulls in defenders who can then be driven past, opening up layup and passing possibilities.
We saw that play out in miniature tonight. Scoot went 4-5 from distance in the first half. It turned him into a monster, an impossible handful for the Hornets. The defense came out, the floor opened, it was practically paradise.
In the second half, Henderson wasn’t hitting. As the defense sagged back (on him and other Blazers who also started missing) both paint points and rebounds evaporated.
The other thing that’s really obvious with Scoot’s game right now is that there are two different Hendersons out there. One is decisive and confident, catching the ball and moving right into a shooting motion, driving off of a hard dribble and bulling through his defender. The other is slower, more deliberate, dribbling several times or holding the ball. That Scoot isn’t nearly as good as the first one.
I’d almost say that you can measure Henderson’s success on a given possession by the amount of time he takes to set up whatever he’s doing. Zero or one dribble into a shot or hard move, he’s golden. More time than that and it gets dicey.
Two Halves, Two Tempos
The Blazers were aided by red-hot three-point shooting in the first period, which more or less carried them through the first half in total. Scoring was easy, energy was high, the tempo was fast. The combination of sweet shooting and hard charging made them all but unstoppable.
Both characteristics failed in the second half. Calming down from 50% shooting beyond the arc was to be expected. The Blazers are not, after all, the Hornets. But it was disturbing how soon, and how totally, Portland went into walk-it-up mode after halftime. They still ran off of turnovers, but otherwise their energy looked about half the level that it was before intermission. Maybe that’s fatigue from playing a whole season with a short roster. Maybe it’s just a bad habit. Whatever it was, it was disastrous. I do not like the deliberate Blazers any more than I like a hesitating Scoot Henderson. If you’ve got it, use it, repeatedly and quickly.
Rebounding
Lono Waiwaiole did a good job of praising Portland’s big-man duo of Donovan Clingan and Robert Williams III in our extended recap tonight. He touched on their rebounding prowess nicely. (Also notable, the Deni Avdija-Robert Williams connection on alley-oops. Noice.) But Lono might have undersold just how badly the Blazers got housed on the boards in the second half, no matter which center was playing. Charlotte gang-tackled rebounds and took them away from the poor, flat-footed Blazers. The effect was like a marathon runner, having spent the whole race in second place, simply grabbing the leader and pulling him backwards while running past him. If the Blazers had kept integrity on the glass they probably could have pulled this one out. As it was, board-work turned into a fatal flaw.
Replay for Days
On the way out of the arena I was talking to Social Media Guru and Writer Paul, another long-time Blazer’s Edge staffer about the fourth period. I wasn’t upset that the Blazers had lost. It was semi-annoying that it took 25 extra minutes for them to do it because of replays.
Granted, those replays helped Portland in almost every case. But seriously, an NBA quarter is supposed to take 12 minutes of active time. Spending twice that much standing around waiting for plays to be reviewed is dissatisfying at best.
This is triply true when almost all of those replays come in the final four minutes of a hotly-contested game. The momentum builds. The crescendo is coming. Then, like a Golden Retriever bumping through the bedroom door during Frisky Snugglebunnies time with your spouse, here come the coaches and refs. “Hey! Whatcha doin’? Let’s stop and pay attention to something else! Look at this!”
Damnit. Get a lock and a leash.
I know the replays benefitted Portland tonight. I don’t care. I think it’s better to live with a couple of understandably close calls going either way than it is to live with games that stop and start more times than a MAX Train in a blizzard. (Ha! Narrative circle closed!) I want to ride the momentum into a finish unmarred by anything but normal timeouts. It’s better for the game than a pretense at 100% accuracy (which you don’t get anyway because not every play is reviewed) at the cost of huge, momentum-sucking lulls. We follow the sport to see the sport, not to root for referee interpretations to go our way.
Screw Portland all you want with those whistles. People think you do it anyway. Just give me a finish that’s fun and allows emotion to build organically.
Thanks for the Participants!
As always on Blazer’s Edge Night, you could look around the upper bowl of the Moda Center and see the visibly-changed demographic. Literally thousands of kids got to see this game because of you. And when the “Let’s Go Blazers!” chants started, you could HEAR it.
We’ll have more stories from the event in the coming days, but for tonight, a huge THANK YOU to everyone who donated tickets to support those kids and the adults who got to come with them. It was loud. It was joyous. It was magic. All of that happens because of you. It’s an incomparable evening, and the credit belongs to all of the givers at this site.
