Blazers Training Camp Report, Day 1: 'A Little Sloppy'

The Trail Blazers kicked off training camp Tuesday in Santa Barbara.

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — The Trail Blazers' choice of UC Santa Barbara for their first "getaway" training camp came down to logistics and the availability of the gym, but the city holds meaning for both Damian Lillard and Chauncey Billups.

Billups played his first-ever college game here as a freshman at University of Colorado in 1995; his Buffaloes were blown out 71-47 by the UCSB Gauchos.

"​​That was a terrible game," Billups joked after the Blazers' first practice on Tuesday. "We lost and I played terrible."

Over a decade later, UCSB was one of the schools that recruited Lillard before he committed to Weber State.

"Knowing what I know now, they might have a better shot," he said.

He may have been referring to the weather, which this week has been in the 80s with clear skies. Or he could have been talking about Santa Barbara being where he married his longtime girlfriend, Kay'La, just over a year ago. Either way, the decision to go out of town for camp has been a hit.

"I think it's going really good so far," Billups said. "We had a really good team dinner last night. We'll meet again tonight. Everybody's happy to be by the water every day. The mood is good. It's going good so far."

As for the actual basketball, they're still getting the kinks ironed out. Lillard gave their first day of practice a grade of "B+," and both he and Billups called it "a little sloppy."

"We've been playing for the last month or so, and today was the worst day," Lillard said. "I think it's that excitement and that emotion about things being official."

The first day didn't feature much scrimmaging—Lillard said they only did a couple of eight-minute runs; the rest of the two-plus-hour session was focused on Billups implementing sets and getting the rookies and new faces up to speed. But the conditioning issues that he noticed last year are gone.

"Last year at training camp, we spent a lot of time making sure everyone's in shape," Billups said. "You have a lot of drills that you push the envelope on. This year, everyone's in shape so I'm able to be a little bit more intentional about what drills we do. Not having to worry about pushing guys as much. It's almost like a practice instead of training camp."

As the week goes on, there will be more specific takeaways. More scrimmaging. Maybe some frontrunners will start to emerge in various positional battles. Right now, everyone's still in happy-to-be-here mode. The rest of the week will be focused on tightening things up ahead of Monday's preseason opener in Seattle.

"The first few days of training camp, we're really just trying to put in some stuff," Billups said. "Start implementing things. Everybody's so antsy. It can be a little sloppy at times. But it was OK today. It wasn't as bad as I thought it might have been."

Keon Johnson impresses

I wrote in yesterday's media day recap that it caught my ear when Lillard brought up Keon Johnson as the "most impressive" of the young players who have been working out over the summer at the practice facility.

On Tuesday, I asked Lillard what specifically it is that's caught his eye about the second-year guard, who came over from the Clippers along with Justise Winslow before the deadline in the Robert Covington/Norman Powell trade.

"I knew who he was, but I hadn't really seen a lot of him," Lillard said. "You try to look for what a guy does. And I think he was still a rookie trying to find his way. You'd see him struggle to try to figure things out. And then towards the end of the season you'd see him start to make threes and get downhill, and I saw his athleticism. But over the summer, I got to see him even more and get to know him as a person, and then you're like, 'Oh, I see why he was a first-round pick.' You see the talent.

"He has that quiet toughness, and he's also a younger guy who will go out and do exactly what you tell him to do. He's picking guys up full-court. He's hitting open threes. He's understanding our defensive principles and our offensive principles and what we want to do, and he's able to be effective and find his way in the midst of that. To me, that's made him the most impressive, especially for being young and not having a lot of experience."

Johnson, who was picked No. 21 overall by the Clippers in the 2021 draft as a freshman out of Tennessee, dealt with injuries in the first half of his rookie season and appeared in just 15 games before being traded to Portland in February. He played more for the Blazers, starting 12 of the 22 games he played in following their deadline-week teardown. The general consensus on him from scouts and league personnel I talked to during Summer League in Las Vegas was that he has a ton of physical talent but has yet to put it together into being a useful NBA player.

That may be changing. Some players don't figure out what they are right away, especially coming into the league as teenagers and changing teams during their rookie season. A good summer in Portland and being a part of the Summer League championship team in July has led to Johnson changing his approach.

"My mindset coming into the start of my career was to come in, do my work and get out," Johnson said Monday at media day. "I've started to notice that it takes more than just coming in, putting in work and leaving the facility. I've tried different things, like trying to get to a certain conditioning level. I've been working on becoming a better professional."

Even with these improvements, it's tough to see where he's going to get minutes right away. As a guard, he's behind Lillard, Anfernee Simons, Josh Hart and Gary Payton II on the depth chart. The extended reps he had last season when the Blazers were tanking are not going to come now that they're competing again. But I've been around Lillard long enough to know that he doesn't throw praise at young players if it's not warranted.

Billups has been impressed, too.

"I don't know about his role right now, but I've been very, very, very impressed by Keon," the coach said after practice on Tuesday. "I'm proud of him. When we got him last year, he was injured and trying to find his way and figure it out. We had a meeting right when the season was over, and I told him what he needs to do and how he needs to play. And he's done every single thing. He's been really, really good. Both sides of the ball. I think all the vets have taken notice that Keon is here competing."