Portland Trail Blazers Are Arriving Behind LaMarcus Aldridge and Damian Lillard

From the Cleveland Cavaliers to the Golden State Warriors, the Toronto Raptors to the Memphis Grizzlies, it seems every week there’s a new NBA team with designs on hogging the headlines and never letting go.

The Portland Trail Blazers have been knocking at that door for some time now. If LaMarcus Aldridge and Damian Lillard have their way, however, the next one won’t even have hinges to hang from.

Fresh off a 114-88 throttling of the New Orleans Pelicans Saturday night, the Blazers (22-6) inched up into sole possession of the Western Conference’s No. 2 seed, a game-and-a-half behind the ballistic Golden State Warriors.

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Following an offseason lacking in any game-changing roster fixes, many wondered if Portland could improve upon last season’s 54-win campaign—a season that saw the Blazers outlast James Harden and the Houston Rockets in the first round, only to succumb to the eventual-champion San Antonio Spurs in the conference semifinals.

After all, that Portland team sprinted out to a similarly incendiary 24-5 start before eventually finding its level as the West’s No. 5 seed.

An older, wiser, more experienced Lillard and Aldridge is, of course, the key to any would-be conference coup for head coach Terry Stotts and Co.

To truly solidify themselves as perennial powers, however, the Blazers must begin to address what’s proved to be their most glaring Achilles heel: bench production.

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After finishing dead last in that department in each of the last two seasons, per HoopsStats.com, Portland has managed to inch its way up to 25th through the season’s first 28 games—marginal improvement, sure, but improvement nonetheless.

Winning a title without a consistent bench is by no means unprecedented. It is, after all, standard practice for coaches to rein in their rotations once the playoffs roll around.

Still, barring any unforeseen deadline dealings, the fortunes of these Blazers stand to remain tethered tightly to their terrific twosome.

Their superstar-esque stats might be similar, but the stories behind Aldridge and Lillard’s respective journeys strike quite the contrast indeed.

Start with the kid from Seagoville, Texas, a skinny but skilled low-post phenom ranked 12th in his recruiting class by RSCIhoops.com, via Basketball-Reference.com. After two years spent racking up reps under Rick Barnes at the University of Texas, eyes and drooling smiles of scouts about him all the while, he entered the 2006 NBA draft as one of the most promising projects in years.

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A draft-day trade with the Chicago Bulls would send Aldridge west. There, he’d team with another rising star—shooting guard Brandon Roy—to form what looked to be one of the NBA’s most intriguing youth movements. Eight years later, Aldridge has made more than good on his All-Star stock. In his wake, the ranks of Tyrus Thomas defenders have long since dwindled to nary.

Cut to a gym in Oakland, California. There, a hardly heralded hardwood wizard shakes and struts to stuff the stat sheet. He takes the only scholarship offered to him—from little known Weber State—and turns the next four years into his own personal warpath. By the 2012 draft, Lillard was widely considered the best point guard in his class.

Not bad for a onetime 2-star recruit, per Rivals.

“The thing about Damian is that anytime a question comes up, whether going back to summer league, going to exhibition season, whether he’s going to hit a rookie wall or not, he answers the bell every time,” Stotts said of Lillard during an April taping of The Jim Rome Show. “He’s got a drive inside him and a will to play well. He wants to be great and he wants to win.”

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Aldridge’s rise was gradual—almost guardedly so. Lillard, by contrast, seemed hell-bent on riding his grudge straight out of the NBA gate, winning the league’s Rookie of the Year Award as a result.

As a one-two punch, Portland’s primary duo has emerged as one of the best in the business, an inside-outside monster impossible to stop and only slightly less so to contain. There remain weaknesses to quell, of course, with Lillard’s on-ball defense and Aldridge’s perimeter-ward drifting being the well-noted warts.

But as a dual-embodiment of the game’s current evolution, where stretch 4s and combo guards dominate the discourse, Lillard and Aldridge are the perfect pair playing at the perfect time—the Platonic ideal of what a one-two punch should look like, even if the banners have yet to bear it out.

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Not that the Blazers are bereft of impact players. From Wesley Matthews’ two-way tenacity to Nic Batum’s all-skills savvy, Robin Lopez’s paint-prowling pluckiness to Steve Blake and Chris Kaman’s second-unit leadership, Stotts’ troops are as top-talented as any team in the league.

But barring some shocking free-agent get, Portland, writes Blazer’s Edge’s Chris Lucia, is an organization whose near-future fortunes are only as high as its current core will take them:

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The Blazers need to continue cultivating a winning culture, keep their core players intact, draft well and make smart trades. Continued success is the only way for a small-market franchise to truly be a player in free agency (barring the acquisition of a generational talent like James), and even then, landing a third star player outside of the draft or a trade is a long shot. If Olshey stays the course and figures out a way to keep Lillard, Aldridge, Matthews, Batum and Lopez in town, the wins should continue piling up and the rest will fall into place as long as the success of the organization continues its upward trend.

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No longer are the traditional free-agent powers—big-market monsters like the Los Angeles Lakers and New York Knicks—believed to be the bellwethers for effective NBA management. In their corner-cutting stead have stepped teams like the San Antonio Spurs, Indiana Pacers and Oklahoma City Thunder, each with their own homegrown plan for how to turn a distinctly speculative science—scouting and drafting, prospecting and player development, into something resembling a sustainable foundation.

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Like those aforementioned franchises, the Blazers have been bestowed with that rarest of NBA treasures: a wealth of homegrown talent both good enough to compete for a championship and steeped deep enough in success to not want to wonder whether the grass might be greener somewhere else.

Portland’s place within arguably one of the best top-to-bottom conferences in history assures its season will see as many surges as setbacks, along with enough reversals of fortunes to fill a casino.

Good thing, then, that the Blazers boast a pair of stars for whom fighting for a spot at the top—whether in some supposed basketball backwater or through the fallen reign of a once-supposed savior—is all but second nature.