For the second game in a row, the Portland Trail Blazers and Sacramento Kings played a close contest into the closing minutes of the fourth period. Thursday night’s affair went into overtime before Portland emerged
with a single-point victory. Today the Blazers did slightly better. They scored far fewer points but the margin of victory was a semi-comfortable 98-93. If that seems like a weird score for a Blazers game, it was. Read on for more news about why.
Here’s the immediate reaction from the evening.
Player of the Game
Shaedon Sharpe’s stat line of 23 points, 4 rebounds, 4 assists, and 4 turnovers on 10-19 shooting looks solid, not spectacular, but the subtext of this game made his contributions count extra. The Kings took a defensive stance (described below) that all but took Deni Avdija out of the captain’s seat for Portland’s attack. Avdija has been everything for the Blazers this year. Somebody had to step up into that void. Sharpe did.
In a slowed-down, isolation-heavy version of Portland’s offense, Sharpe shone. His scoring was one of the only things the Blazers could rely on this game. Occasionally he even took the point position on defense. His defensive stances had mixed results, but he was out there.
Sharpe’s outer-space dunk with 2:11 remaining in the fourth also put a spiritual bow on this game. Nice work all around.
Stat of the Night
One of the major deciding factors in this game was Sacramento’s utter inability to hit a three-point shot, even when open. I’d love to say Portland’s defense was responsible for the Kings shooting 6-31, 19% from deep. We’ll give them 30% of the credit. The other 70% was just Sacramento being baaaaadddd.
What We Noticed
The Kings appeared to have a primary focus on defense: Anyone But Deni. They played hard on his dominant hand, double-teamed him high on the floor, and sold out to stay in front of him. Avdija finished the game with 24 points in 40 minutes of play but shot only 6-18 from the field doing it. Deni’s poor percentage was evidence of the all-night fight he got embroiled in. Fortunately he hit 9-10 free throws (that’s where his points came from) and registered 10 assists, somewhat mitigating the circumstances.
One of the effects of impeding Avdija was slowing down Portland’s offense overall. The Blazers worked against the shot clock more tonight than they usually do in a week. Grinding into the halfcourt took away all of Portland’s opportunism and much of their effectiveness. Witness their 98 points against a season average of 119. They attempted 11 fewer field goals than average. That made it hard to score. The bench, especially, suffered, having to make calculated isolation moves instead of finding seams and hitting quick. The Blazers’ lack of individual offensive talent really showed.
Portland began to compensate by initiating the offense with Shaedon Sharpe or Toumani Camara. It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t even that effective. But the team settled into it as the game went along and conjured enough to get by.
That’s surely because the Kings are not among the NBA elite at this point. It’ll be interesting to see if other, better teams copy this strategy. It’d be scary to play this type of game against an opponent that could actually score.
Up Next
The Blazers will welcome the Detroit Pistons to the Moda Center on Monday night at 7:00 PM, Pacific. Portland will be honoring their 1999-2000 Western Conference Finals participants that night.
