Portland Trail Blazers Are Championship Contenders

You can say that the preseason has no actual bearing on a team's performance in the regular season, but the fact that the Portland Trail Blazers dropped 110 points on the Utah Jazz without their team MVP, LaMarcus Aldridge, speaks volumes to what they'll be able to accomplish in the future.

With newly acquired Jamal Crawford, Raymond Felton and Nolan Smith each showcasing their talents in front of a jam-packed Rose Garden crowd, the Blazers kept the ball moving, running at a tempo we've never seen Portland push before, and, more importantly, keeping Blazers fans on their feet the entire night.

And honestly, it looked beautiful.

As Felton pushed the ball at his normal, faster pace, the young-legged Trail Blazers got out on the break, scoring easy buckets in transition and finding open teammates.

Wesley Matthews only shot 25 percent from deep (1-4), but he finished with a team-high 17 points and embraced his new role as Brandon Roy's successor.

Crawford scored eight points, but he found his teammates seven times for open scores with his heavily underrated court vision and somehow came away with three steals.

And who could forget Elliot Williams, who, after suffering a nasty, season-ending right knee injury, came out and dropped 13 points in 12 minutes, shooting a perfect three-for-three from downtown in his NBA debut?

Factor in Gerald Wallace and Nic Batum, who both started in L.A.'s absence, and the two oldest guys in the game in Kurt Thomas (40) and Marcus Camby (37), and you've got the perfect mesh of youth, talent and wisdom needed to make a legitimate run at an NBA Championship

The Portland Trail Blazers are ready to take the NBA by storm.

Rip City has a new identity. No longer are they the grind-it-out, possession-by-possession, half-court basketball team. The Blazers came into the '11-'12 season with an in-your-face, catch me if you can mindset.

A team that'll lock you up on defense and push the ball on offense, genius acquisitions have turned the Portland Trail Blazers into a new kind of monster.

A monster that's stacked at every position and has the depth to wear teams down in this compact 66-game season, the Trail Blazers are primed for a very deep playoff run this season.

The preseason might not mean much, but you had better believe that coaches are devising schemes to stop Portland right now, a scheme that'll be much more difficult to employ once LaMarcus Aldridge returns to action.

Kristian Winfield is a Featured Columnist for the Portland Trail Blazers on the Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter @BriscoXCI