All the momentum of a dream start to the season, including a 3-0 start to the just-wrapped four-game road trip, came to a halt over 24 hours. On back-to-back nights, Portland had no answer for arguably the two MVP frontrunners this season. Luka Doncic went off for 53 points in Friday's loss to the Lakers, and last night against San Antonio, Victor Wembanyama had 29 points on 13 shots in just 24 minutes and dominated the game defensively.
The loss to the Spurs was the most frustrated Micah Nori has been in his short time as a head coach.
"The start of the third quarter, we were awful," he said. "We got one or two stops, and then it was ... the turnovers again, and just we looked kind of out of sorts. First time all year. If you want to find excuse, you can find excuse. But it's a big-boy league. They're on a back-to-back, we're on a back-to-back. These are going to happen. We're going to have guys out. I don't care who's out. We've got to make sure we compete and be who we are. And tonight, I thought was the first time that we kind of got away from that."
The game against the Spurs was a clear schedule loss, with Damian Lillard running on fumes after playing 37 minutes against the Lakers and Robert Williams III sitting out the second night of a back-to-back. But the loss to the Lakers was very avoidable. They were done in by turnovers and missed free throws, squandering a 16-point early lead.
They're now 6-3 on the year with another tough stretch coming up: back-to-back games at home this week against Oklahoma City, followed by a six-game road trip that includes Minnesota, New York and Philadelphia.
Banking the early wins they've been able to get could be helpful. If they can get to Thanksgiving at or above .500, they're in great shape because their schedule gets a lot easier after that, both in number of games at home and quality of opponents.
Here's what else happened over the past week.
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As a bonus, I appeared on The Athletic's "Saturday Slam N' Jam" podcast yesterday with Andrew Schlecht and Alex Speers to talk about the Blazers' season thus far if you want to check that out. (We recorded on Friday morning, so obviously the team responded to this good-vibes talk with back-to-back really bad losses.)
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The Blazers began their road trip with the news that Ja Morant had suffered a grade-two left hamstring strain and would be sidelined for at least four weeks.
An unfortunate development, but a huge opportunity for Scoot Henderson to reclaim a spot in the starting lineup and recover from a slow start to the season.
So far, it hasn't really gone according to plan.
After three up-and-down performances in the first three games of the road trip (not great, not terrible), Henderson was an outright disaster against the Lakers. He had no assists and five turnovers, and his only points came on two free throws. His box-score stats looked a little better against the Spurs (13 points on 4-of-10 shooting and only one turnover), but he was a -23 in plus-minus and some of his rim attempts were painfully off.
Most of his turnovers are completely unforced, either bad passes or possessions where he passes up an open three-point look to drive to the basket and gets called for a travel.
Nori has talked this season about telling Henderson not to overthink too much, but he's clearly in his own head right now.
Still, Nori isn't losing faith.
"I believe in Scoot," the coach said before Saturday's game against the Spurs. "We believe in Scoot. Over the course of 82 games, everybody's going to struggle. They just are. Right now, his struggle is coming early on. So my job as a coach is to help put him in position to shorten those struggles, because we do know that he is very, very capable. And like I told him tonight, from what I've seen in the film that I watched, he was awfully good last year against these guys in the playoffs."
The scrutiny that naturally comes with a No. 3 overall pick struggling in his fourth season is compounded by the Blazers not agreeing to a contract extension with Henderson before the start of the season, making this officially a make-or-break year for him. And so far, it's clear which direction that's headed in.
There's still plenty of time for Henderson to turn it around, and the Blazers need that badly for as long as Morant is out.
Morant joined the Amazon Prime broadcast of the Lakers game and said he might be back sooner than the four weeks the team has ruled him out for. Micah Nori downplayed that notion pregame but did confirm that Morant is doing well: "He was in L.A.," Nori said. "He went to see the doctors there, and it sounds like that he'll be able to, not putting a timeline on it, but it might not be as extensive as what we thought it was, which would be a positive. I don't know if that's four weeks, six weeks, whatever may be. But I'm hoping it's on the shorter end of their initial prognosis." My opinion: this is wishful thinking. Hamstring injuries are incredibly tough to predict and there's a high risk of re-injury if you come back too soon. The Blazers will, and should, be conservative with Morant given both his importance to their early-season success and his own personal injury history.
Also on the injury front, there should be an official update in the coming days on Vít Krejčí's injury and timeline for recovery. But an ankle fracture is a long-term injury, so he won't be back anytime soon.
The loss to the Lakers on Friday was the Blazers' first of four Emirates NBA Cup™️ group stage matchups. They're currently fourth in West Group C, tied in record with the Kings at 0-1 but leading Sacramento in point differential. The Lakers are the only team that's played two Cup games, and they're 1-1. Golden State and San Antonio have both won their only Cup matchup to date. The Blazers' next Cup game is this coming Friday in Sacramento.
Jrue Holiday passed Steve Nash to move into the NBA's all-time top 100 scorers list during the Lakers loss.
The free-throw struggles continue to be baffling. They missed 11 of them in Phoenix (30-for-41), 10 in Los Angeles and six against San Antonio. Deni Avdija, who shot 78 percent from the line in his first year in Portland and 80.2 percent last season, is shooting 66.7 percent this season on 9.3 attempts per game, which is a problem given how much his game is predicated on driving and drawing contact.
Yang Hansen had his first career double-double against the Spurs, with 12 points and 10 rebounds. With Robert Williams III resting on the second night of the back-to-back, Yang played real non-garbage minutes and outside of a missed putback in his first shift, mostly held his own. His ability to defend the paint without fouling in particular has improved greatly from his rookie season to now. In games where the Blazers need a third center when Williams sits or Donovan Clingan gets in foul trouble, it's clear Nori trusts him more than Branden Carlson or Micah Potter. Still a long way to go, but it's encouraging to see how much he's improved from last year, when he was mostly unplayable outside of the end of blowouts.
Nori on Yang after the Spurs game: "I thought that Hansen was fine. He played 26 minutes, found a way to get 10 rebounds, and he's fine. Gets to the free-throw line six times, shot some open shots. We just need him to continue to to get better. And I think the more that he continues to play, and he starts to play well, and get sped up, and his communication gets better, that's only a positive for us. So the more minutes that he can gain, the better that we will reap the benefits of for moving forward. We think highly of him. He's going to be able to help us. And I thought that, shoot, when you look at this over the 26 minutes, -4 (plus-minus), and I don't care when he got them or what he did, but he made an impact."
Leading into the Spurs game, the team posted photos of a robot walking into the building, which was apparently a promotion for one of their sponsors, the real-estate company PropM. Reaction on social media was overwhelmingly negative, and the robot was booed loudly when it was shown on screen during the game. This was something PropM and the team should have seen coming given the similar negative reaction the Fire got when they announced a partnership with an AI company over the summer.
Bruce Springsteen and Flea sat courtside at the game in Los Angeles and were shown on screen.
The Blazers' former senior VP of basketball communications, Rahsaan Gethers, announced this week that he's launching his own PR consulting agency. He was one of the 70 employees the new ownership group laid off in May and, in my opinion, one of the more ill-advised cuts that clearly had nothing to do with importance or job performance. This is a cool move—I'm always in favor of people owning their own work and protecting themselves from what could happen if the company they work for gets bought by someone like Tom Dundon.
🔥 The rosters were unveiled on Wednesday for the third season of Unrivaled, which begins in January. Bridget Carleton will play for Mist Basketball Club alongside Veronica Burton, Breanna Stewart, Arike Ogunbowale, Kiki Rice and Izzy Harrison. 🔥 Jordan Harrison announced that she will be starting weekly basketball training sessions for middle and high schoolers in Oklahoma City. Harrison was one of the best stories of the Fire's inaugural season, making the roster out of training camp as an undrafted free agent and then getting converted from a developmental deal to a standard WNBA contract—only to shockingly announce her retirement from basketball following her rookie season. From what I've been able to gather, after a four-year college career at West Virginia, she wasn't planning on playing professionally at all until she got a camp invite from the Fire. Once she proved to herself that she was good enough to make a WNBA roster and hang in the league, she did everything she hoped to do and wanted to focus on other things. This appears to be one of those things. 🔥 As a reminder, the WNBA draft lottery takes place one week from today. The Fire have a 5.2 percent chance at landing the No. 1 overall pick (presumably Juju Watkins). If it goes chalk, they'll pick fifth.
This week
🏠 Tuesday: vs. Oklahoma City (8 p.m., Moda Center, NBC) 🏠 Wednesday: vs. Oklahoma City (7 p.m., Moda Center) ✈️ Friday: at Sacramento (7 p.m., Golden 1 Center)
Jersey of the week
😬😬😬
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Sean Highkin
Sean Highkin
Sean Highkin
