Trail Blazers 113, Suns 111 (OT): What We Saw
Thoughts and observations from Portland's overtime win over Phoenix, plus the inaugural Jerseys of the Night.
The story of the Trail Blazers' overtime win over the Suns in their home opener was Damian Lillard both returning to form and trusting Anfernee Simons to take the final shot. But there was a lot more that happened. In the first of what will be a regular feature from every home game, here's what I saw on Friday night, on and off the court, including the inaugural Jersey of the Night.
Simons, not Lillard, was the one who gave the pregame speech to the crowd ahead of the home opener. A bit jarring for those of us who have known him since his rookie year, when it was a struggle to get him to say anything in public at all.
The crowd was announced as a sellout and looked the part. This was the first time the Moda Center crowd felt like a real Moda Center crowd in well over three years, dating back pre-pandemic.
Chauncey Billups opened his pregame press conference with condolences to the family of Tony Brown, the longtime NBA referee who passed away this week at 55 after a battle with pancreatic cancer. "Tony was always honest, he was always very fair," Billups said. "Like all of them, I had my battles with T.B. But we laughed a lot on the court too. Just one of the finest that we ever had."
Trendon Watford was inactive again last night as he continues to battle a right hip flexor injury that caused him to miss four of the Blazers' five preseason games as well as Wednesday's season opener. Billups didn't seem too concerned about it when I asked him about it pregame.
The highlight of pregame media availability was Kevin Calabro asking Suns coach Monty Williams what he remembers about his time in Portland as an assistant on Nate McMillan's staff, where he worked from 2005 until he got hired as head coach in New Orleans in 2010: "I had never had any bench experience, and Nate was nutty enough to make me the No. 2 assistant. … It probably hit home for me when he tore his Achilles and he made me the head coach. I'll never forget, I was walking the sidelines and Nate would want me to communicate with the players, so I turned to him and asked him for a call, and he would just bark at me, 'You make the call!' I was like, 'OK…' I remember that vividly. He said, 'I put you up there for a reason. Stop being you for a second and be me and make the call.' He forced me to get up there and just make calls. For me, I'd just give the ball to Brandon [Roy] and get out of the way."
Speaking of the Suns: literal seconds before tipoff on Friday night, ESPN published a report that NBA commissioner Adam Silver personally apologized to Suns employees for not taking the allegations against Robert Sarver as seriously as he should have. There's still no update on a timeline for a sale since Sarver announced he was beginning the process following the league's investigation. As it relates to the Blazers, I think theirs and any other team sales will be on hold until the Suns are sold because the price they fetch could set a new record and reset the market for other teams.
Much like last year, around this time when the Suns were in town as the initial ESPN report was being released, it didn't feel in the room like the ownership situation was affecting the team too much, although there's no way it's not. And Deandre Ayton, who said on media day that he hadn't spoken to Williams since Game 7 of the Dallas series and then did the most unconvincing walkback I've ever seen, had a good game against the Blazers but not a dominant one.
This is where we should mention that Jusuf Nurkic was much, much better than his underwhelming season debut in Sacramento at both ends of the floor. There were a few of the smoked layups and dropped passes that you have to live with from him, but he held his own against Ayton and justified being reinserted into the closing lineup. He finished with 20 points and 17 rebounds.
The Blazers debuted their "Statement" jerseys, which are all red with a giant black pinwheel on the front and no text. I still don't like them and think they look like cheap practice jerseys, but the team is leaning hard into the "Damian Lillard designed these" marketing campaign.
Shaedon Sharpe played 12 minutes and looked a lot more like a 19-year-old rookie than he did in his Wednesday debut—no points, only two field-goal attempts and four fouls. Billups shed some light on the process behind the decision to give him real rotation minutes from the jump. He said Sharpe made great strides in his development on the defensive end in what Billups has often called the "second training camp," the week of practices the team held between their last preseason game and opening night. He also said Joe Cronin has given him full autonomy over the decision to play or not play his first lottery pick as general manager—even telling Billups he'd be cool with red-shirting him for the entire season if that was what the coach felt was best. (Side note: not pressuring your coach to play someone just because you drafted them is one of many differences between Cronin and his predecessor.) But Billups feels Sharpe is ready: "I feel like he gives us something different offensively with his shotmaking and athleticism. … In that second training camp, we scrimmaged almost every day, and I thought he was one of the best guys out there in every single one of them. … I know what my eyes have seen. I know the kid has a chance to be very special. What better way to develop him than just kind of throw him in the fire? … We lost a lot of basketball games to get Shaedon Sharpe. Let's play this kid."
Jerseys of the Night