Portland Trail Blazers: Still struggling to attack the basket

The Portland Trail Blazers are one of the best outside shooting teams in the league. However, they struggle mightily at scoring at the rim.

The Portland Trail Blazers lost another heartbreaker Friday night, falling 101-97 to the visiting Brooklyn Nets. The team drops to 6-6 on the season and has lost four of its last six games.

Blazers fans are surely searching for answers to this recent skid. The team started the 2017-18 season 4-2 with a +11.9 net rating. That net rating has plummeted to -3.8 in the six games since.

A number of schematic issues are contributing to what’s wrong in Portland. Today we’ll cover just one: their inability to finish at the basket.

Admittedly, they’ve had this issue for awhile. In 2014-15, the Blazers shot 62.4 in the restricted area, good for sixth in the NBA. However, that percentage has tailed off ever since. In 2015-16 Portland went 57.8 percent from inside, 25th-best in the league. That percentage held at 57.7 percent in 2016-17, but their ranking dropped to 28th.

This season has been their worst yet. The Trail Blazers currently shoot 50.3 percent from around the cylinder, dead last in the NBA. That number is 4.0 percent worse than the 29th-ranked Boston Celtics.

The Blazers shot 45.2 percent at the rim on Friday against the Nets. Other lowlights include a 35.5 percent night in a loss to the Milwaukee Bucks, a 40.6 percent game in a win over the New Orleans Pelicans and a 40.9 percent night in their buzzer-beating loss to the Los Angeles Clippers.

The league average at the rim this season is 62.3 percent. Portland has surpassed that bar only twice this year. Their best outing saw them shoot 69 percent inside in a win over the Oklahoma City Thunder.

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Eight Blazers have attempted more than 15 shots at the rim in this young season. None of them are shooting at league average and five of them are shooting under 50 percent. The injured Al-Farouq Aminu leads the pack at 55.6 percent on 18 attempts. He is followed by Jusuf Nurkic at 55.1 percent on a team-high 78 attempts.

The worst percentage comes from rookie Caleb Swanigan, shooting 39.8 percent on 18 attempts. Pat Connaughton (47.1 percent on 17 shots), Ed Davis (47.8 percent on 46 shots) and Maurice Harkless (48.0 percent on 50 shots) are struggling as well.

But the most glaring name on the list is C.J. McCollum. He’s shooting 43.2 percent on 37 attempts from within the charge circle, the worst percentage of his career. This is contrasted with the 52.2 percent he’s shooting from 3-point range, currently third-best in the NBA.

The team is actually doing well collectively from outside. Led by McCollum, Aminu (43.3 percent) and Connaughton (42.2 percent), the Blazers are shooting 38.5 percent from beyond the arc. That’s currently good for fifth-best in the NBA.

3-pointers and shots at the rim are so important in today’s game. The Blazers’ inability to honor half of that commitment is drastically setting this team back. Nowadays, they quickly run out of options when Jusuf Nurkic is on the bench and Damian Lillard is prevented from driving to the bucket.

While the current roster certainly needs to improve its performance at the rim, there’s a good chance the finishing ability they need will have to come from outside of the Willamette Valley, either via minimum contract or trade due to the team’s cap restrictions. Otherwise, this could shape up as another middling season in Portland.

Next: 2017-18 Week 4 NBA Power Rankings

The Blazers will have another chance to improve their play on the court and at the rim on Monday against the Denver Nuggets.