Portland Trail Blazers Are NBA's Biggest Defensive Surprise
The Portland Trail Blazers held the league's most productive offense to just 87 points in their 21-point blowout of the Dallas Mavericks on Thursday night, highlighting a defense that appears to be one of the NBA's most improved after an admittedly small sample size of just five games.
The Mavericks' recent string of subpar third quarters continued, this time as the Trail Blazers outscored them by a 35-18 margin en route to a second half in which Portland held its opponent to just 37 points.
Credible two-way efforts are becoming a trend for this club, particularly on the heels of Tuesday's decisive 101-82 victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers. Portland even managed to hold the explosive Golden State Warriors to just 95 points in a losing effort.
"That looked like the team that we need to be," head coach Terry Stotts told reporters after the Cavs game. "We withstood their barrage in the first quarter, stayed with our schemes and our coverages and the next three and a half quarters we did a great job defensively.
"We stuck with the defense and we got rhythm to the offense. It was a solid win at both ends."
The Stotts era in Portland may not have been known for its defense so far, but that's changing. The Trail Blazers are doing their jobs, tending to the little things vital to beating good teams, as Stotts alluded to after the Cavs game, dissecting his club's success on the defensive end:
"Up and down the line, individual jobs on their scorers, the communication in our defensive schemes. For the most part, we rebounded the ball well. Our help and alertness to penetration. They didn't get a lot of attacks in the paint. Our transition defense—they didn't really get too many easy baskets. When you hold a team like Cleveland to under 20 for three quarters, you're doing a lot of good things.
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And Portland continued doing good things on Thursday, holding Dallas below 100 points for the first time this season.
Entering Thursday's contest, the Trail Blazers ranked sixth in the league, allowing just 97.6 points per 100 possessions, according to Hollinger Stats. It's still early, but that's a vast improvement over last season's defensive efficiency—when the Trail Blazers ranked 16th and gave up 104.7 points per 100 possessions.
This team still has a long way to go before proving itself among the league's defensive elite, but it's becoming increasingly difficult to deny these results.
The Trail Blazers held Dallas to a 36.7 percent mark from the field and kept stars Dirk Nowitzki, Chandler Parsons and Monta Ellis under control.
Before that, they bottled up LeBron James, giving up just 11 points to the four-time MVP.
"That's team defense." swingman Nic Batum told reporters afterward. "Wes [Matthews] and I took the challenge. He's the best player in the world so you got to stay focused 48 minutes on him. You can't relax or take like two possessions off because, you know, he can get it going in two possessions."
It's the kind of attitude and execution that could elevate this team to the title conversation after a 54-win season that ended with a five-game semifinals ousting at the hands of the eventual champion San Antonio Spurs.
Sure, there are plenty out there who still can't equate the words "Blazers" and "defense" together with any comfortability. Jared Wright of Oregon Sports News is convinced Portland's offensive identity is too overwhelming for this team to move into the top third in defensive efficiency as currently constructed:
"To be completely honest, the Trail Blazers don’t have the personnel or the coaching acumen to be a great defensive team; Stotts is an offensive coach, and he doesn’t have an elite defensive coach on his staff as of yet. They will be what they were last season, a team that will score 110 points a game while hoping not to surrender 120.
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Despite the appearance of overnight success, however, this defensive transformation has been a work in progress under Stotts.
As NBA.com's Jeff Caplan noted during the preseason, "Heading into [last season's] All-Star break, Portland ranked 23rd in defensive rating. In the final 29 games of the season, as the Blazers battled for playoff position in the rugged Western Conference, they ranked 10th, allowing 103.0 points per 100 possessions."
It's been a conscious effort for a team whose offense has never been in question. No one doubts the Trail Blazers can keep pace with the high-scoring outfits out West. The question has been whether they could get stops. Stotts addressed this with the media in October:
"It's going to be a commitment. We can't rely on our offense. We were first in offense in the first part of the season and then there was a drop significantly in the second half and our defense kept us in position to win games. I think everybody on our team realizes that for us to make the next step it's going to come by maintaining the level of offense that we had last year and becoming a top 10 defensive team.
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So far, the Trail Blazers are just that.
They've always had the tools. Batum has exceptional length on the wing. Wesley Matthews has always been known as a solid perimeter defender. Center Robin Lopez has the size to provide interior rim protection.
The test will be remaining focused on a nightly basis and putting those tools to work.
Should Portland do so, there's nothing stopping this team from replacing the Oklahoma City Thunder as the West's next best hope to dethrone the Spurs.
At the very least, there's little doubt these Trail Blazers will be more prepared to do so than they were just a few months ago. This team is more mature, more polished—perhaps even hungrier.
It may still make headlines on account of its gaudy scoring output and three-pointers—including the 12 made against Dallas on Thursday.
But reaching elite heights requires as much grit as it does glamor. And the Trail Blazers seem to have figured that out.
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