Trail Blazers 135, Nuggets 110: What We Saw
Observations from the Blazers' blowout of the Nuggets, plus the Jersey of the Night.
A week into the regular season, the Portland Trail Blazers are the only 4-0 team in the NBA. Even their most optimistic fans didn't see that coming. There were some of us in the local media who were a little higher on them than the national consensus, but that was just thinking they weren't in danger of falling out of the play-in. Certainly not "They'll be undefeated after the first week after outlasting Phoenix in overtime and blowing out the Nuggets." But here we are.
Here are some sights, sounds and observations from Tuesday night's shocking, convincing home win over the Nuggets, plus the Jersey of the Night:
Justise Winslow sat out the game with a right ankle sprain. Considering he stayed in the game after hurting it against the Lakers on Sunday and was listed as "questionable" until right before gametime, I can't imagine it's that serious. Chauncey Billups didn't seem too worried about it.
Billups told a funny story about Josh Hart pregame when asked for an example of his competitiveness: "Our first day of training camp, we brought in refs for the scrimmage and he said, 'Coach, are they allowed to call techs?' I said, 'Hell yeah, they can call techs.' Then, I went to the refs right away and told them, 'Any little thing he does, call a tech.' That's the only way I can coach him."
As he'll do, friend of the program Danny Marang asked Billups a question during his pregame availability involving some in-depth Synergy numbers about the Blazers' efficiency after timeouts. "You're running off numbers and shit that I've never heard before," Billups cracked. "I've got to go back to school to answer your questions." (He was joking, and he did answer Danny's question.)
I got to try Kinnamon, the new cinnamon roll kiosk on the Moda Center concourse. My good friend Casey Holdahl gave it his endorsement at the home opener and all I can do is echo those sentiments. Highly recommend.
Your LeagueFits update for the night: Jerami Grant showed up to the arena in a pair of pretty intense Balenciaga rain boots. I saw them at his locker before the game and they legitimately come up to my knees. I could probably fit both of my feet into one of them.
Lillard was announced pregame as Western Conference Player of the Week, on the strength of his back-to-back 41-point games against the Suns and Lakers. He had 31 on 10-of-16 shooting against the Nuggets, along with six rebounds, eight assists and only one turnover. I think he might be back to pre-surgery form.
On the turnovers: Portland only had eight the entire game against Denver after having 19 against the Lakers. Billups, asked about that improvement after the game: "We have a lot of guys that have never really played with each other. It's the careless turnovers that really bother me. It's not when you're making the extra pass to do the right thing and they deflect it. I'm OK with that one. It's the careless ones. I think that bothers any coach. But we'll continue to get better."
With Winslow sidelined, Shaedon Sharpe was the Blazers' first sub off the bench. His stat line wasn't anything spectacular, and his game was somewhere between the stellar debut against Sacramento and the dud against the Suns. On his first two possessions, he got an open look at a three and missed long by about three feet, and then blew by two-time reigning MVP Nikola Jokic for an athletic layup. He's still finding his way, but Billups clearly trusts him fully already, and that's significant.
Keon Johnson made his season debut and acquitted himself nicely. He knocked down an open three and had a chasedown block of what looked like a wide-open Jamal Murray layup. Johnson was the Blazers' sixth man during the preseason and Lillard and Billups raved about him during training camp, but there's a minutes crunch when it gets to the real games. The minutes I thought he'd get are already going to Sharpe.
Lillard was booed at the Moda Center for the first time in his 10-year career during a new "This or That" video segment shown during a timeout. He was asked to pick between the Oregon coast and Multnomah Falls, and he made the shocking admission that he's never been to the Oregon coast. The crowd wasn't having it. Blazers game ops might have to take that video out of circulation, judging from the reaction.
Lillard, asked to explain himself postgame: "Never been. That's not a lie. I've never been. I just haven't. Everybody in my family has been to the Oregon coast, but not me. I'll make it down there eventually. After this, now there's gonna be pressure on me."
I think the "Ball Don't Lie" screen animation when a visiting player misses free throws is new. Billups—a former teammate of Rasheed Wallace in Detroit—let one out, too.
Speaking of Danny Marang, last night was big for him. He's been Anfernee Simons' biggest believer since the day the Blazers drafted him, to put it mildly. I had the pleasure of sitting next to him on press row during the third-quarter outburst, and captured his reaction after probably the third or fourth of Simons' six three-pointers in the quarter.
Simons was asked after the game if he could compare the feeling of a hot shooting streak to anything us civilians could relate to. After thinking about it for a minute, he said: "Maybe that great feeling of finding money on the ground. Something like that. 'I guess it's my lucky day.'"
Lillard on the Blazers' change in defensive focus through the first four games: Just taking the challenge and caring about it. "This year, coming into each game, that's what we're focused on. We've been saying it since September. We want to be a team that people don't like to play against. That doesn't mean we go out there just fouling and running around wild. We've got to hang our hats on that. If somebody's calling us up into a matchup, be ready for that matchup. Take pride in that and be offended by that. Do it knowing that the low man is going to be there. You're going to have help. But that's just what we've been talking about, being a disciplined team. If we want to really win, this is what it's gonna take.
"I think the most important thing is that we govern ourselves about that. At first, it was just Chauncey being like, 'This is what we're gonna do.' We're playing pickup and he's stopping pickup like, 'This can't happen.' Once we got to Santa Barbara, it got to the point where we're stopping each other and we're like, 'No, this is what it has to be.' That was the difference for me, from what we've had in the past. We had something like that the year we went to the Western Conference Finals. We were at each other about making sure we did our jobs. But this year, it feels a little bit different. It feels fun. It's fun to go out there and not let teams to have their way."
Jersey of the Night:
