After their face plant in the first round of the NBA playoffs last season against the New Orleans Pelicans, it was widely expected that the Portland Trail Blazers would acknowledge the competitive ceiling of their roster and trade one or more of their stars in the hope of finding a path at least to the Western Conference Finals. Confounding such predictions, the Blazers instead chose to retain their core of Damian Lillard, CJ McCollum and Jusuf Nurkic and tinker with the edges of their lineup, signing, among others, Stephen Curry’s brother Seth to a one-year contract. Their strategy seemed to pay off with a 12-6 start, but with a .500 record in the twenty games since, they have fallen into their accustomed spot squarely in the middle of the pack in the Western Conference.
A trip down to Sacramento to seem them play the Kings on New Year’s Day was a more appealing prospect than sitting at home for a slate of meaningless college bowl games on TV, especially with the Kings beginning to achieve competitive relevance in the NBA after so many years in the wilderness. The game did not disappoint. The Blazers took a 64-50 lead at halftime, mostly due to the efforts of Nurkic, who finished the game with 24 points and killed the Kings inside with 23 rebounds. Curry contributed 18 points off the bench, going 4 for 6 from 3-point range. The Kings, similarly to when they played the Golden State Warriors in December, refused to go quietly and came back in the fourth quarter due to hot shooting from guard Bogdan Bogdanovic, not only erasing the Blazer lead but going up by nine points with just over three minutes left. At that point, the Kings stopped making shots, and Lillard took matters into his own hands and scored most of the remaining Blazer points, including two layups in the final minute to force overtime and five points in the extra period to finish the proceedings with a Blazer victory.
Barring injuries to their stars, the Blazers likely will return to the playoffs in 2019, but their prospects there are very much open to question. They have shown themselves capable of playing well against good competition, beating the Warriors in Oakland after Christmas and smoking the Philadelphia 76ers just before coming down to Sacramento,. Their hot streaks never seem to last more than a few games, though, partly due to problems matching up with certain otherwise mediocre teams, such as the Utah Jazz, who beat the Blazers twice recently by scores of 30 and 21 points. A saving grace for the moment is that neither the Jazz nor the Pelicans would make the playoffs if the season ended today, so one can hope that the Blazers will draw a more favorable first-round match-up come April. Sometimes, the key to success is choosing your opponents wisely.
