Trail Blazers Snap Winless Road Trip in Brooklyn, But Real Test Looms in January

A much-needed return to form sets up a brutal rest of the month.

📸: Dustin Satloff, Getty Images

BROOKLYN, N.Y. — For all that is wrong with the Trail Blazers right now—and there is a lot of that—Sunday afternoon’s overtime win over the Nets at least ensured that they won’t be staring down an 0-7 road trip to kick off the calendar year.

With the Knicks coming up on Tuesday and a back-to-back against the two best teams in the Western Conference, Minnesota and Oklahoma City, to close out the trip, getting the one in Brooklyn was their best chance to avoid a nightmare start to 2024.

The Blazers team that showed up at the Barclays Center, despite still being without starting center Deandre Ayton and two key rotation players in Jabari Walker and Matisse Thybulle, looked a lot more like the Blazers of the first month of the season that competed, defended and stayed in games against more talented teams. Even if they’d lost this one, the effort was a far cry from the three non-competitive games in Phoenix and Dallas over the past week, the last of which came against a Mavericks team without Luka Doncic.

“We didn’t even watch tape from that last Dallas game,” Chauncey Billups said. “It happens sometimes in the NBA. I’m done with it. It’s not who we are. We’re not even going to look at it. It’s over. But we got a chance today to show who we are and I thought we did that.”

The win was Portland’s 10th of the season and a much-needed return to form for both Anfernee Simons and Shaedon Sharpe, who had struggled after returning from recent absences. The list of strong performances extended to Jerami Grant, Malcolm Brogdon and Duop Reath, who had his first career double-double with 15 points and 13 rebounds.

The next month, which leads into the trade deadline, will say a lot about whether the disastrous start to the road trip was a blip, or this gutsy collective win was. It’s one or the other.

Here’s the rest of the Blazers’ schedule leading up to the Feb. 8 trade deadline:

• Finishing off the road trip against the Knicks (sixth in the east and undefeated since trading for O.G. Anunoby last week) and two Western Conference contenders in the Thunder and Timberwolves.

• A homestand against Phoenix (again!), these Nets and the Pacers, who can’t guard anyone but have the NBA’s best offense.

• A four-game road trip against the Lakers (going through it right now but have beaten Portland twice this season), Oklahoma City, Houston and San Antonio.

• A home back-to-back against the Sixers and Bulls.

• Damian Lillard’s homecoming game with the Bucks.

• A two-game series in Denver against the defending champion Nuggets.

Now you see why it was this important to get this one. There are never a lot of wins to look at on the schedule for a team of Portland’s caliber, but this stretch is going to be especially brutal. They’ve beaten the Nets, Pacers and Suns, but they’ve lost to the Spurs.

Tuesday’s game against the Knicks will be instructive. If getting a win after three dispiriting blowouts reignites what had seemed lost about this group’s edge, that will tell us something. If they come out flat again and get run off the floor like they did in Phoenix and Dallas after seemingly righting the ship against the Nets, that will tell us something different.

It was never about wins and losses for the Blazers this season. As soon as Lillard requested a trade in July, the record was going to be what it was. For the first six weeks of the season, the majority of fans and readers I’ve heard from have expressed some variation of the sentiment that they’re enjoying this season despite the losses because they’ve seen consistent effort and development from a young roster, which is all you want in a rebuilding year.

Over the past week, particularly after the two Dallas games, that has felt like it’s worn off considerably. There are going to be a lot of losses no matter what. The next month will give some clarity about what those losses will look like.