Can Portland Trail Blazers Make This a Series Against Golden State Warriors?
The Portland Trail Blazers will be at home, and that's a start.
Free from the Oracle Arena din, where delirious Golden State Warriors fans revel in triumphing over perceived vulnerability, the Blazers get a chance to steady themselves in Game 3 on Saturday.
Portland was 28-13 at home this season but just 16-25 on the road, with the latter representing the worst mark of any playoff team. To make this a series, the Blazers must hope their familiar confines produce better play, though their survival may depend just as much on foreign concepts.
The Blazers need to adjust, even if they're not talking that way.
"I think that you have to evaluate how much you actually want to change, because of the good basketball we played for a long stretch," Portland head coach Terry Stotts said after Game 2, per David MacKay of Blazer's Edge.
Leaning on the status quo will be tempting, particularly after Portland outplayed the Warriors for all but about six minutes of a 110-99 Game 2 loss.
Golden State blitzed the Blazers in the fourth quarter, and it will make its own tweaks, as head coach Steve Kerr explained to CSNBayArea.com's Monte Poole: "Portland made some adjustments and did some things that bothered us,” Kerr said. "So we looked at those things and talked about the things that we might do differently."
The same tactics used in the same doses, then, won't work. And to put it bluntly, there simply aren't many options available to Portland.
Lineup Juggling: Now With More Crabbe!
When on the court together, the Blazers' current starting forwards, Moe Harkless and Al-Farouq Aminu, have contributed to a postseason offensive rating of just 97.9 points per 100 possessions. Against a Warriors team that led the league in offense this season, that's not going to cut it.
Even with Stephen Curry sidelined (the MVP is out for Game 3 as well, per Andrew Perloff of the Dan Patrick Show), Golden State has scored 115.5 points per 100 possessions against the Blazers. That's more than their league-leading regular-season rate of 112.5.
Though his play has been uneven, and he subtracts from the Blazers' defensive potency, Allen Crabbe might deserve more time in the starting unit.
Inserting him at small forward would give the first group a shooter who hit 39.3 percent of his treys in the regular season, and the Warriors likely wouldn't ignore him on the perimeter like they do both Aminu and Harkless.
The worry here is that Crabbe has actually shot a lower percentage from downtown in the postseason than either of his currently starting counterparts. If he's not making the Warriors pay from deep, his shooting and slightly better skills as a one-dribble facilitator won't mean much.
And hey, maybe he's not totally helpless on defense.
Tossing Crabbe out there is a gamble, but it might be a bigger one to expect Aminu and Harkless to keep shooting like they have so far. That 97.9 offensive rating is already too low for Portland to survive; just a touch of offensive regression, which is probably coming, could turn things ugly.
We never said these suggested tweaks were without their risks. The Warriors eventually find ways to exploit everything. But at least if Crabbe hits a few shots with the first unit, he'll prevent the Dubs from focusing so directly on Damian Lillard and C.J. McCollum—the Blazers' only two creators.
Switch and Hope
Among playoff teams left standing, only the Cleveland Cavaliers have allowed more than Portland's 105.6 points per 100 possessions. And the Blazers sure aren't hitting 25 treys in a game or blowing opponents out with wild scoring eruptions to compensate like the Cavs are.
If the Blazers aren't open to making up some ground on offense by utilizing Crabbe more, they'd better look into some new approaches on the other end.
One option: Switch everything.
The Warriors made a killing this season with hybrid lineups that utilized like-sized players at five positions. Outfitted that way, Golden State negated screens and rendered the pick-and-roll offense toothless. If all you get out of a high pick is Draymond Green trapping your point guard, you haven't accomplished much.
Though the Blazers aren't equipped with the defensive talent or endless supply of 6'6" to 6'8" bodies the Warriors are, they could still make some hay by switching aggressively. Perhaps creating more mismatches on the perimeter and in the post would sucker Golden State into attacking in one-on-one situations.
We saw the Warriors dump the ball to Harrison Barnes when Lillard wound up on him a few times in Game 1. And anytime the Dubs use a possession on a low-percentage isolation or post set for Barnes, they're not dicing you up with ball movement, screens and cuts. That's a win for the Blazers.
Similarly, if a bigger defender like Mason Plumlee finds himself switched onto Shaun Livingston or Klay Thompson on the perimeter, maybe Golden State's guards get a little tunnel vision and try to attack too aggressively on their own.
You don't need much imagination to see this backfiring. Green, Livingston and Thompson are all monsters on the block, and those drives against mismatched big men could lead to kick-outs for triples. But guarding the Warriors conventionally sure isn't working.
The Warriors don't do it often, but they have stretches (especially without Curry) where they try to do too much individually. One of them happened in the second quarter of Game 2, and it drove Kerr crazy.
Attack Size
Pushing the pace against a team like the Warriors invites disaster...usually.
But the Blazers could prosper by upping the tempo whenever Golden State slots a conventional center, particularly Andrew Bogut, in the lineup.
Bogut isn't a speedster in transition. Because all five of Portland's starters can capably advance the ball, it's possible to create early spot-up looks for Lillard and McCollum against a Warriors defense that isn't at full strength until the big Aussie makes it back a few ticks into the possession.
Much of the Blazers' early advantage in Game 2 stemmed from successful forays in transition.
There were even some flashes in Game 1.
Those opportunities dried up when the speedier Festus Ezeli took the floor, and they disappeared altogether when Green moved to center. The opportunities to attack a scattered Dubs defense won't present themselves often, so Portland must capitalize when it can.
Similarly, the Blazers have to force Bogut to defend in space. Involving him in as many high pick-and-rolls as possible is a good way to do that. And you can see here how reluctant the big man is to venture out beyond the three-point line, which allows Lillard a chance to step right into an off-the-dribble triple.
Paradoxically, the big risk in attacking the Warriors' size is succeeding.
If the Trail Blazers get enough clean looks in transition and generate offense by getting Bogut into defensive spots he doesn't like, Golden State can just go small and unleash hell. Even inviting Kerr to toss Ezeli into the mix is risky after the backup big man had so much success containing Lillard in Game 2.
Remember that thing about there being no risk-free adjustments for the Blazers? Yeah, this is another good example.
Don't Freak Out
This is the big one.
Portland played better than the defending champs for roughly 42 of the 48 minutes in Game 2, and that has to mean something. So does notching a blowout, 137-105 regular-season win Feb. 19.
It should impart a sense of stability, even confidence. The Blazers know they can compete for long stretches, and that's more than can be said about most Warriors opponents this season—Curry or no Curry.
If Portland leans on what it learned in Game 2 about attacking Bogut and pushing the pace, and if it finds just a little more scoring punch, it can win a game in this series.
Believing more is possible, even if the Blazers pull it all together, isn't realistic. And that's fine.
For a young team way ahead of schedule in the rebuilding process, one game could be a major building block. Showing resiliency against one of the most dominant foes in league history, one not missing a beat without the MVP, would be a real achievement.
It's hard to say so without it sounding like a slight, but the Blazers are good enough to avoid a sweep.
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Stats courtesy of NBA.com.
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