Houston Rockets vs. Portland Trail Blazers: Postgame Grades and Analysis
The Portland Trail Blazers welcomed the Houston Rockets to gorgeous Oregon on Thursday for a tussle between excellent offenses. The best-in-the-West Blazers notched over 100 points for the 10th straight game and grounded the Rockets 111-104, improving their sterling record to 19-4.
The big men reigned up front with huge stat lines on each side. These numbers don't even fit into a conventional sentence. They require a colon. Dwight Howard: 32 points, 14-of-22 shooting, 17 rebounds, three blocks, two steals. LaMarcus Aldridge: 31 points, 12-of-22 shooting, 25 boards, two blocks and two steals. Both of them had a good week on Thursday night.
The win provided Portland with a full-game lead over the San Antonio Spurs and Oklahoma City Thunder, while Houston fell to 15-8.
Both offenses struggled in the first half and shot worse than 37 percent, but things were all tied entering the fourth quarter. That's when Portland scored the first 10 points in the frame to put Houston in a tough hole. The Rockets fought back, as is their wont, but the Blazers ripped off a prodigious 11-1 run in crunch time to emerge with the win.
The Trail Blazers have been fantastic to start the year, but their winning ways have been met with deep skepticism. Royce Young of CBS Sports expressed wariness on Dec. 4, when Portland was 15-3:
"They've played a pretty soft schedule taking on eight Eastern Conference teams along with six games against the Lakers, Suns and Kings. (And they've lost twice to the Suns.) It's not to say the Blazers aren't a contender, it's just that we might want to wait and see a little still.
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Here's the bottom line: The Blazers have been the most efficient scorers in the league and rank first in points per 100 possessions (per NBA.com). Their defense has been decent, ranking 12th in efficiency, but they just need to be good enough for the offense to outscore the opponent. As head coach Terry Stotts told Grantland's Zach Lowe, "Teams are shooting well from the midrange against us, but we try to keep the bigger picture in mind."
That bigger picture is the scoreboard and the win-loss column, and both have looked pretty for Stotts' team so far. As Lowe put it, "Portland's road map to a playoff spot this season was simple: an elite offense and an average defense. It’s not an ideal title contention model, but the Blazers aren’t chasing rings." In fact, that model has worked so well, Portland could be chasing rings sooner than anyone thought.
Here come the postgame grades for every player and analysis of their individual impacts on the outcome.
Blazers Key Player Grades
Damian Lillard, Point Guard
Damian Lillard was a statistical enigma on this evening. He shot 1-of-10 yet still finished with a plus-20 floor rating. His teammates deserve fruit baskets for this win. Lillard notched eight points and six assists, but he struggled mightily to get his shot up, finding five of them blocked.
Lillard recently placed No. 8 (just behind Kyrie Irving) in ESPN's list of the top 25 players under 25 years old (subscription required). Kevin Pelton, an analytics guy, identified the primary weakness in Lillard's game like a film-study expert:
"Lillard is clearly one of the most complete guards in the NBA, except for when he is attacking the rim. He seldom finishes because he often holds onto the ball too long after jumping, thus shooting the ball on the way down. He'll contort his body and extend his shooting arc to avoid contact or get the shot off, instead of exploding up and finishing on the rise as he initiates contact.
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A quick look at Lillard's shot chart confirm's Pelton knows what he's talking about.
Grade: C-
LaMarcus Aldridge, Power Forward
Sorry everyone, there are no more rebounds. We'll have to cancel the rest of the season.
LaMarcus Aldridge continues to hear "M-V-P" chants in Portland, and it was pretty clear why against Houston. He exploded for 31 points and 25 boards and only would have needed a few overtimes to flirt with 50 and 50.
Aldridge continues to live at his home, which always happens to have sweeping mid-range views of the basket his team is shooting at. His love of playing away from the rim, hanging out at the elbow and generally sniffing around for jump shots is why Robin Lopez has been so key to the floor spacing this year.
Aldridge can't be a center, as he just doesn't like it. Think of him as a somewhat-stretchy 4.
Grade: A++
Wesley Matthews, Shooting Guard
Wesley Matthews is probably the best shooting guard in the league that you never, ever hear about. Unless you play fantasy basketball, you could go an entire season without his name coming up. However, things are changing in Portland, and he's been ever better this year with the Blazers offense clicking on all cylinders.
Matthews is averaging career highs in points per game (16.3) and field-goal percentage (52.0). He can also hit triples with regularity, as he's made 452 treys over the last three full seasons. He notched 18 points in this one, but it could have been an even bigger night had he shot better than 2-of-8 from downtown.
Grade: B
Nicolas Batum, Small Forward
Nicolas Batum is like some cyborg cobbled together by French scientists; he can do it all. The 24-year-old (who was drafted in 2008 by Houston) is stuffing the stat sheet to near capacity this season: 47.4 shooting percentage, 41.3 three-point percentage, 13.6 points, 6.3 boards, 5.3 assists and 1.2 steals per game.
As Borat would say, "very nice!" Of course, Batum was a little lacking in blocks at just 0.6 per game, so he picked up two of those against the Rockets. Batum finished up with 15 points, six dimes and six rebounds.
But no play was bigger from him than his three-pointer with just over three minutes left to stretch Portland's lead to seven. Houston never threatened again. What is the French word for "clutch"? And no, Google, "embrayage" is the thing in a French car.
Grade: A-
Robin Lopez, Center
Robin Lopez's picture is in the dictionary next to the word "serviceable." He is a better fit for Portland's rotation than J.J. Hickson was last season, and he turned in a very efficient performance on offense against Dwight Howard and the Rockets.
The Sideshow Bob lookalike scored 16 on 7-of-9 from the field and added 10 boards (four offensive) and two blocks. While he was victimized with regularity in the post by Howard, the defense put him on an island to keep Houston's three-point shooting at bay. They won the game, ergo, the strategy worked.
Grade: A-
Rest of Bench
Mo Williams continues to provide an excellent spark off the bench and tallied 13 points with four assists. Also, some people call him "Maurice," but only when he speaks of the pompatus of love.
Ex-Rocket Thomas Robinson played just five minutes, but he went to work on one second-quarter possessions in particular. After missing a contested layup, Robinson attempted a tip-in amidst numerous bodies, then fought for the rebound, cleared out some more room and went up again only to get hacked and whacked.
He received applause for his effort from the crowd and promptly drained both foul shots. Too bad it didn't garner him a few more minutes.
Joel Freeland showed some nice quickness for his size when he ran the floor for a transition bucket late in the first quarter. Aside from three rebounds, that was about all he did. Dorell Wright notched six points but never really left his imprint on the game. He's just happy to be out of Philly.
Grade: B-
Rockets Key Player Grades
James Harden, Shooting Guard
James Harden had 12 points at the half, but those came on 4-of-11 shooting and he had just one assist in that time. He was more efficient in the second half and finished with 25 points, seven dimes and six rebounds.
However, Harden never really got any momentum working on this evening, and his points came in fits and starts. The Blazers did a reasonably good job of keeping him in check, and even though 25 points sounds like a lot, it wasn't enough to lift the Rockets.
Grade: B+
Dwight Howard, Center
Dwight Howard played an excellent first half and recorded a double-double before he had logged 20 minutes on the court. He took advantage of Lopez down low as the Blazers practically refused to double Dwight in order to guard the perimeter. No wonder he finished with 32 points and 17 boards.
Howard came up with some beautiful defense on the help side when he rejected Batum's shot in the second quarter. He completely ambushed the shot and threw it 20-odd feet to midcourt to set up Patrick Beverley in transition. Too bad the point guard was called for charging at the hoop.
Howard did this again with two and a half minutes left in the game, but the ball was on its way down, so it was goaltending, and it came after a shooting foul, so Dwight basically gifted the Blazers an automatic deuce when they had no chance to rebound it. Whoops.
Grade: A
Chandler Parsons, Small Forward
Chandler Parsons was as cold as the weather outside the Moda Center, as he trudged through a brutal first half. He missed shots all over the floor but was especially ineffective near the rim, missing seven of his first eight attempts.
He got things going somewhat in the second half and finished with 14 points on 6-of-18, five boards and two assists, but he also got five of his shots blocked for a forgettable night.
Grade: C+
Patrick Beverley, Point Guard
Beverley's defense was integral to limiting Lillard's output in the game. Though he misfired on seven of his 10 field-goal attempts, everything else was lovely: nine points, 11 rebounds including five offensive boards, two assists, three steals and a block.
He's a well-rounded young man, regardless of what OKC fans say about him, but his yeoman's effort could not provide Houston with a victory.
Grade: A-
Terrence Jones, Power Forward
Plus-minus ratings can be a poor indicator of a player's overall performance, but Terrence Jones posted a minus-26. That can't be good. He also guarded Aldridge for stretches, so some of LaMarcus' 31 and 25 are on TJ.
Jones did notch 10 points to go with two dimes, a steal and a blocked shot, but he also got his lunch money taken several times, which is hard to do.
Grade: C
Rest of Bench
Jeremy Lin is no longer the starting point guard in Houston even though I've never heard of "Beverleysanity." Go to Harvard and get a demotion—it just goes to show how little my mother knew about college after all.
Lin shot just 1-of-4, but he did fling himself to the foul line for four attempts. The high-priced reserve tallied five points, two dimes and a steal.
Omri Casspi got an invitation to the block party, but Francisco Garcia decided to attend the poor-shooting party. While Casspi turned in six points, three rebounds and a blocked shot in his 16 minutes, the Cisco Kid shot just 1-of-6. Proving he can always make himself useful, however, Garcia collected two offensive boards and three steals.
Grade: C
What's Next?
The Blazers have Friday off, but they will be headed to the City of Brotherly Love for a meeting with the 7-16 Philadelphia 76ers. Though the Sixers have stumbled lately, dropping eight of their last 10, six of their seven wins have come in Philly. That kicks off a tough stretch of four road games in five nights.
The Rockets can take a beautiful drive down the coast when they continue their road trip Friday against the 13-10 Golden State Warriors before wrapping up the road trip nearby against the Sacramento Kings on Sunday.
