Portland Trail Blazers: Looking To Weather The Injury Storm
By Steve Krebs
With the injuries piling up in the Portland Trail Blazers’ frontcourt, another team would most likely be on the verge of hitting that panic button, or at the very least be preparing to incur a decent amount of losses over the next few games. Fortunately, the production from the team as a whole keeps increasing with every big that goes down.
When the replacement of a replacement goes down, you have to wonder what your team has done to wrong the basketball gods to receive these crushing blows, especially when you consider Joel Freeland was actually filling in quite nicely. Though, such is life, and we are at this point in time regardless, so looking forward what is going to keep the Ws coming?
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Well, for starters, it will not have very much to do with amassing the most points in the paint each game, which works completely in Portland’s favor because they are not the type of team to win focusing predominately on that aspect to begin with. If anything, it’s more about stopping the opposing big men from doing so, an area that does give an alarming cause for concern.
One of the things that has to happen is they must penetrate into the paint at a much higher rate, if not only to spread the floor to create open shots, but even more so is the necessity to get fouled to try and cause a situation where size becomes a lot more irrelevant.
The more times they drive the lane, the more opportunities they will have to get the opposition off its feet, and hopefully draw contact.
The Trail Blazers will also need to continue to obliterate teams in the one area they are most successful in, transition three-pointers. Those 10-0 runs going the other way can be stabilized a lot quicker when your team is knocking down threes on a 2-on-1 break.
When it comes to stationary three-point dominance, the league is under their thumb by 8 percent.
Having starting guards that muster up a combined total of more than seven rebounds per game is going to provide somewhat of a Band-Aid, but it’s obvious this is an area they will be in some serious trouble come time for the second unit.
This will not be anything but a very grueling next few weeks for the Trail Blazers, but it will definitely solidify that toughness and team chemistry that has earned them the second spot in the Western Conference to date. Unless you are watching Portland basketball, many do not see how much of a well-oiled machine this is, just hope the machine does not lose any more parts.
If they are to weather this storm it is going to take the efforts as a whole, if one guy attempts to carry the load on their own, the team is sure to fall flat.