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Were they ever a threat?
Blazers no longer a threat out West?
PER Diem: Dec. 11, 2009
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Hollinger By John Hollinger
ESPN.com
Will a plausible rival to the Lakers in the Western Conference please step forward?
A month into the season the Lakers look as good as ever, but their compe ion for the conference crown seems deeply flawed. Not only do today's Playoff Odds project no West team besides L.A. to win more than 52 games, today's Power Rankings place only one West team -- the aforementioned Lakers -- in the league's top five.
Suffice it to say that most of L.A.'s potential foils have disappointed. Denver, its chief rival a year ago, has looked like a champion on some nights and a lottery team on others. On Thursday night, for instance, the Nuggets managed to lose to a Detroit team that was missing Will Bynum, Ben Gordon, Tayshaun Prince and Richard Hamilton. San Antonio, another rival on paper, may scramble just to make the playoffs as age and injuries continue to chip away at the Spurs' nucleus. Similar cases apply as we call the roll: The Hornets, Rockets and Jazz also look well short of their standard of the previous two seasons, while Dallas doesn't seem any better than last season's second-round speed bumps.
And then there's Portland. If there was one team I thought could provide a legitimate threat to Laker hegemony in the Western Conference, it was the Trail Blazers. They were young, they had size and they seemed to match up well against L.A.
But at the one-quarter mark of the season, the aspirations in Portland are no longer the sugarplum dreams of reaching the Finals but the less lofty concern of making the playoffs. The 14-9 Blazers are a far cry from the squad that won 54 games a year ago and boasted the league's best scoring margin after the All-Star break, especially at the offensive end.
So what happened to Portland? Let's break it down:
Injuries: Yes, the Blazers have taken some serious blows here. Losing Greg Oden for the season last week was a huge setback, and Travis Outlaw, Nicolas Batum and Rudy Fernandez all are out for at least the next month. With rookies Patrick Mills and Jeff Pendergraph also hurt, the Blazers are down to nine healthy bodies and are using Juwan Howard as the first big man off the bench.
Frontcourt depth: We can't say they didn't try. The Blazers chased after Hedo Turkoglu, Paul Millsap and Lamar Odom with their free-agent dollars last summer before settling on Andre Miller; any of the three could have helped soak up some of the frontcourt minutes now going to Howard and rookie second-round pick Dante Cunningham. Portland also drafted Pendergraph to add a blue-collar element, but he's injured, too.
Pieces fitting: The Blazers have struggled to incorporate their one prominent new face in Miller, with Brandon Roy especially resistant to the idea of Miller replacing Steve Blake at the point. Incorporating Oden into the attack proved equally difficult, as his post game removed some of the spacing that had made this offense so potent a year earlier.
Expectations: One wonders if Brandon Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge are trying too hard, if that's possible, and are vexed that things aren't quite as easy as they were in the second half of last season. Roy clamors to have the ball in his hands on nearly every play, which is one reason he prefers Blake to Miller. Meanwhile, Aldridge appears to have leveled off at a sub-All-Star level -- a bad sign considering he just signed a $65 million extension.
OK, that takes care of all the big-picture issues. Now let's get to the nitty-gritty.
The entire difference between this season's Blazers and last year's group is at the offensive end. The Blazers actually are a bit better on D, but Portland ranked second in the league in Offensive Efficiency last season and this season they're 11th.
Plumb the numbers further, and there's one big change we haven't talked about much: shots. Last season the Blazers won by taking shots. Lots of them. Because of a slightly below-average turnover rate and a league-leading offensive rebound rate, Portland launched more shots per 100 possessions (100.1) than any other team in the league ("shots" being defined as field goal attempts plus 0.44 times free throw attempts). The Blazers were relatively accurate, too, ranking eighth in true shooting percentage, but the real story of their season was one of quan y rather than quality.
This season? Portland's accuracy hasn't changed at all; the Blazers' true shooting percentage is nine points ahead of the league average, just like it was a year ago. The problem is that they're generating fewer attempts. Portland takes 96.7 shots per 100 possessions, barely beating the league average of 96.3.
More than three shot attempts per game have simply vanished into the ether. The causes are that the Blazers' turnovers have increased, while their offensive rebounding has declined in roughly equal proportion. The Blazers rank only fourth in offensive rebound rate at 29.6. While that's still an impressive figure, the drop hurts -- so much of their attack was built on second shots.
That number is likely to decrease further in Oden's absence. He led the league in offensive rebound rate a year ago and was threatening to defend his le, with only Detroit's Ben Wallace exceeding Oden's 16.0 mark among players with at least 250 minutes played. In what seems to be a bad omen, the Blazers have pulled down just 22 offensive boards in the three games they've played without Oden (counting the Houston game in which he was hurt in the first quarter).
If there's good news, it's that the turnovers are likely to diminish. Oden was one of the league's most turnover-prone players, so his absence will improve Portland's numbers in that area. So will the loss of Fernandez, who had become a wild turnover machine in his second season for reasons that aren't entirely clear.
Alas, if the decline in turnovers matches the dip in offensive boards, the Blazers won't be any better off, and will go through the rest of the season without those three shots a night from a year ago.
That's one more reason the Lakers shouldn't quake in their boots when they look at the Western Conference field right now. Riddled by injuries and struggling to replicate last year's offensive effectiveness, the Blazers are among many hopefuls looking more like pretenders than contenders thus far. If they can't locate the missing three shots, they have little hope of breaking into the conference's upper crust.
• One piece of unfinished business from Wednesday night: We have a new No. 1 in the Power Rankings. The Lakers zoomed into the top spot after holding the Jazz to six points in the final stanza Wednesday, and it looks like this might be a permanent shift.
The key is to look at not just the ranking but the number next to it: 109.5 in the Lakers' case, which is the highest Power Ranking any team has had all season. The parity that marked the season's opening weeks is giving way, and the top three teams are separating themselves from the pack. One can see the change in the league's top three teams since the opening weeks by noting that Atlanta's Power Ranking has hardly changed at all -- in fact it's gone up slightly -- but the Hawks have fallen to No. 4 from No. 1. The Lakers, Celtics and Magic are running away from the compe ion right now, with Atlanta the only other team staying close.
Last edited by 2Cleva; 12-11-2009 at 01:44 PM.
Were they ever a threat?
In tlong's deluded mind.
Portaland was bnever a a true threat theycan only win REGULAR season games at home vs. The Lakers ...
Dallas, Denver and SA are the biggest LAkers threats ...
they will probably win tonight though. Cavs are sick
POR?
you don't win when everyone likes to take jumpshots all the time. LA/SA will rape them in the PO
How can he say Dallas doesn't seem any better than last year's team?
We probably can't beat the Lakers in a 7 game series but I still think we're a better team than last year...
I disagree with this. If they get their players healthy except Oden before March and make some fine tuning, they're still a threat.
At the starting of the year before our world fell apart, I could agree somewhat with hollinger about us being the only western conf. Team who had the size and depth to matchup wiith the lakers.. however there are two major things we can't match, kobe bryant and phil jackson. That alone is almost impossible for any western conf. Team to over come in a 7 game series.
That being said right now I think we can still make the playoffs barring anymore injuries and somehow staying afloat till we get rudy, batum and our two rookies back. As a 6th to 8th seed more than likely..
The only two teams who have a legitimate chance at bringing the lakers to a 7th game are the nuggets and mavs.. but 7 games is pushing it with the way the lakers are playing.
I've been saying for awhile now that the Lakers were going to steamroll through this pathetic Western Conference.
Nuggets, Mavs - all paper tigers in the playoffs. Phoenix Portland, Houston, Jazz;
Spurs = done since 2008 WCF.
Non-issue
Hey, Dead! How's it goin' with her?
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