Trail Blazers setting us up for another fall
One night you’re the toast of America, saying no to a play — or even a pass — for a 37-foot step-to-the-side shot at the buzzer to win an NBA first-round playoff series.
Two series later, trying to make another hero-ball shot, you don’t even get the shot off — the defender strips it from you, because he knows you’re going to shoot it.
That’s what happens when the big kids get out of school.
DON’T GET me wrong — I’m happy to see the Portland Trail Blazers in the Western Conference finals for the first time in 19 seasons.
But it looks like the visit is going to end badly again, against a team with a few more good players, a team that plays very well together and is fun to watch.
Portland’s star guards, Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum, are incredible individual ballplayers.
Lillard sent OKC home in the first round with the aforementioned “bad shot,” according to the Thunder’s Paul George, who was guarding him. And McCollum’s step-back jumper from the foul line late in Game 7 in Denver finished off the higher-seeded Nuggets.
They take hard shots.
They make hard shots.
But those shots get a little harder against teams that play better defense.
When the Warriors need a basket, they run a two-man game and get a layup. How Golden State plays is (mostly) fun to watch. If you key on one or two players, any of the other three can beat you.
When the Blazers need a basket, one of their guards plays hero ball and hopes it works. It’s like they don’t have much trust in their teammates — which, given their roster, is somewhat understandable.
However, that kind of ball is agonizing to watch, even when it works in favor of your team.
GRANTED, BLAZER fans were spoiled in 1977, when Portland won the NBA title on its first trip to the playoffs in franchise history.
The Blazers, with Walton and Lucas and Hollins, etc., were even better the next season, starting off 50-10 before Walton got hurt. Then seemingly everyone else got hurt over the next few years, and that was the end of that run.
There was hope a little over a decade later, when Portland returned to the NBA Finals, with Drexler and Porter and Kersey and Duckworth, etc. But the Blazers got big-brothered by the Bad Boy Pistons in 1990 and, two years later, nobody was going to beat the MJ-led Bulls in the ’90s. MJ kept a few all-time greats from winning NBA titles, including Stockton and Malone.
THE LAST time the Blazers made the conference finals, in 2000, they did it with a roster full of great names. But some at the tail end of their careers, and the group just didn’t play well together.
Rasheed Wallace was 25, Damon Stoudamire 26, Brian Grant 27.
But Scottie Pippen was a rental at 34, after the Bulls ended their run a couple years earlier.
Detlef Schrempf was 37.
Arvydas Sabonis was 35, but his knees were 65. His son, Domantas, was 4, still 14 years away from becoming a Zag.
The Blazers took the Shaq/Kobe Lakers to the limit, but blew a double-digit lead in Game 7. L.A. went on to win the first of three straight NBA titles. Portland made it as far as the conference semifinals just twice after that, until this season.
After that meltdown, it was less than two seasons later that Wallace and Stoudamire pulled their Cheech and Chong act traveling back to Portland after a game in Seattle against the Sonics.
The Blazer franchise has largely gone up in smoke since then.
Hopefully Dame and CJ can get some help — or trust their help — before it’s too late.
Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter@CdAPressSports.