Just last season, with the Blazers trying to implement a new defensive scheme, they were smoked in their final three tune-ups, losing by an average of 26 points while allowing more than 125 points a game. The exclamation point was a 129-96 drubbing at Denver when the
Nuggets ran circles around the Blazers in the preseason finale.
Before the team bus had left Denver’s arena, then coach
Terry Stotts was beginning to question his decision to spend all of training camp and preseason altering the team’s defensive strategy. He pulled aside team leaders
Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum.
“I remember when we lost the game at Denver, and right after the game (Stotts) was like, ‘Do y’all want to stick with this, or what do you want to do?’ ” Lillard recalled.
Lillard offered that if the Blazers returned to their drop coverage on pick-and-rolls, more players would know their assignment. The trio felt the Blazers were a playoff-caliber team, and they considered whether their lack of success adapting to the new defensive system could cost them when the regular season started in five days.
“It wasn’t some big meeting, but it was almost like (Stotts saying), ‘I’m not sure that we are going to execute it the way it needs to,’ ” Lillard said. “So basically, we came to the conclusion like, all right, we are going to stick to our basic coverages that we had already done.”
That brings us to Friday night and the latest stink job left by the Blazers in this winless preseason. Portland was once again routed, this time, 119-97, by Golden State as
Stephen Curry dropped 41 points in 30 minutes and the Blazers clanked their way to 10-of-40 shooting from 3-point range.
The Blazers are once again learning a new defensive system, this time under the guidance of new coach Chauncey Billups. It’s similar to the more aggressive system Stotts tried to install last season — with bigs playing up at the level of the screen on pick-and-rolls — but the Blazers once again spent most of the preseason being torched. Portland finished the preseason ranked 23rd in defensive rating and last in offense. They lost by an average of 23.8 points.
This time, with two practices remaining before Wednesday’s season opener against Sacramento, there will be no wavering. No reverting to what is known and comfortable. Billups is digging in for the long fight, or “the process” he calls it, in changing the Blazers. And the deeper he digs in, the more he seems to accept that the Blazers will have to take some lumps for the greater good of progress.
“It’s not a how, it’s a you have to,” Billups said of sticking to the new defense. “It’s what we believe in. And by the way, so many other teams do it this way, really good teams, so it’s a proven fact that it works. We just have to stick with it, and we have to understand when we make small gains, to take those victories and keep building on it.
“Now, it can be frustrating, because when it doesn’t look good, it looks really bad. But we have to be better about mental toughness.”
The two players who were in that pivotal preseason meeting a year ago in Denver, sound as if they are on board with riding the wave of change.
“Obviously, that’s going to be what we do; it’s not like we are just going to go away from it,” Lillard said. “Where are we going to go away from it to? That’s the schemes and principles that (the new staff) comes with.”
Added McCollum: “We’re just going to have to get better at what we are doing. You can’t know what works until you do it, and we haven’t even had a full roster … until you do it with Larry (Nance), Cody (Zeller), Anfernee (Simons), Nas (Little),
Tony Snell, Dame … until you do it with everybody, you are not sure how it’s going to work.”
It would be foolish to put too much stock into these preseason results. Lillard played all of 42 minutes the entire preseason as he focused on being fresh and rested after a summer playing in the
Olympics. Zeller, the backup center, played only 13 minutes after breaking his nose in the preseason opener. Tony Snell hasn’t even practiced because of a sprained right foot.
Nassir Little, after a ballyhooed offseason, played one game and then was sidelined with a hamstring injury. And Simons missed the final two games and is now wearing a splint over his right thumb. And both McCollum (ankle sprain) and
Norman Powell (hip) missed practices and games.
The injuries and load management not only skewed the results but also stunted the team’s growth in practices. Still, it wasn’t a pretty sight. The four preseason games showed enough examples of poor transition, poor rotations that led to open 3-pointers, and open lanes to the rim, to evoke flashbacks of the past two seasons when Portland ranked 27th and 29th out of 30 teams in defensive rating.
“I would say we had some good moments, but we had some moments that it was like, ‘Dang. We are a lot farther away than I thought,’ you know?” Billups said Friday. “So it’s been a little up and down. I’m not too surprised with it. Any time there is change, there is a period in there where it’s going to take some adjustment.”
‘Moments of growth’
By the time Wednesday rolls around, the Blazers expect to be full strength except for Snell, who has yet to practice this season. On Friday, Little worked out hard enough during pregame to be covered in sweat. Simons can still shoot with his new splint. Zeller will be cleared to play with a protective mask. And Nance was a late scratch Friday because of a sore knee, which isn’t believed to be long term.
The starting lineup will be Lillard, McCollum, Powell,
Robert Covington and
Jusuf Nurkic. The top players off the bench will be Simons, Nance, Zeller and Little.
Billups is counting on progress once those nine start playing together, let alone practicing together. He insists he sees moments of growth in practices, but he wants those moments to turn into stretches.
Lillard, for one, says he can see the Blazers nearing the form they need to be on the defensive end.
“We are not far off. We are not far off at all,” Lillard said. “It can look very bad, like it’s no progress because all it takes is one thing to fuck it up. If one person is in this spot and the next person doesn’t do their part where they can help this person, it’s a breakdown. So, we’ve had a lot of good possessions, but if one thing goes wrong … all it takes is that one mistake.
“That’s why we just have to get comfortable with it and get to where everybody is trusting what the next person is going to do.”
That’s part of why Billups called the Blazers’ preseason play “spotty” and McCollum said “we are a work in progress.”
“We’ve had some moments where it looked right,” Billups said of the defense. “Then we have more moments where it doesn’t. When you are in the process of changing habits, there are some growing pains that are necessary. But more than that, you have those situations where it doesn’t seem like it’s working out, and your normal human reaction is to go with what you know … and then you start to try and do that, and then you are in between and nothing is working out.
“We’ve had a lot of those moments,” Billups said. “And I would expect we will have more of those moments. But that is what the process is all about.”
It’s tough to tell just how rough this process will be. In one breath, Billups talks about the team’s star power with Lillard and McCollum, but in the next, he warns of growing pains.
“It’s just a process, man. And we all have to have a level of patience,” Billups said.
The hardest part in this early process came last week, during a 45-point loss at Phoenix when the five starters opened the game and four of the starters played at least 21 minutes. Phoenix ran circles around the Blazers defense, so much so that Billups called it a “horrible effort” and a “step back.”
“What I don’t want to happen is while we are trying to figure this thing out, I don’t want everyone to get impatient, and then we just kind of become the team they have been — start to rely on Dame and CJ and guys to just make shots and pull us out of it. We want those guys to make shots but we want them to be created by what we do as a unit.
“We know they can do that. So I say it again — habits are really hard to change.”
Now, with the regular season approaching, the process of changing habits gets real. We will find out if accountability was just a training camp buzzword, or if it carries some consequences. And we will see just how long a new coach, and a new roster, can dig in their heels and buy into a new approach.
“Trust is going to be our main thing, on both sides of the ball,” Billups said. “Listen, some nights, it’s going to work and it’s going to be beautiful. And there will be nights where, you know, we gonna get rocked doing our stuff. But that’s the same for every team. That’s no different than any other team in the league.”
(Photo of Billups: Thearon W. Henderson / Getty Images)
