Portland Trail Blazers: A week-long fall from grace

After three straight losses, Damian Lillard, CJ McCollum, and the Portland Trail Blazers have gone from first place in the West to disarray.

It’s Tuesday, Nov. 20. The location: Madison Square Garden. When asked in a postgame interview with MSG Network’s Rebecca Haarlow what it feels like to play in such an iconic basketball arena (with his mother in attendance as well), three-time NBA All-Star and leader of the Portland Trail Blazers, Damian Lillard, responded, “There’s no energy like this building.”

Who could disagree with him? After all it is the home of the New York Knicks that is coined “the Mecca.” However, the energy in this building did not just come solely with the stigma of a road game in NYC. On this night, not only did energy change, but power shifted.

Last week’s 118-114 win over the Knicks elevated the Trail Blazers to a 12-5 record. It was a game that went down to the wire and was won by the dynamic duo backcourt of CJ McCollum and Damian Lillard, who totaled 60 points combined. The First Team All-NBA point guard’s dagger in the closing seconds of the 4th quarter proved to be beyond a pivotal shot and game-clinching bucket.

With the powerhouse Golden State Warriors falling the night prior to the Houston Rockets in a game that would begin a four-game losing streak for the defending champions, the Blazers’ win would award them a spot in the standings few could’ve possibly foreseen: the top seed in the Western Conference.

Though it was still obviously very early in the season, it was an exciting time in the Blazers locker room and the fanbase. Sitting seven games over .500, it was a time for jubilation for a franchise that few predicted to start in such fashion coming off such a crushing postseason exit in the spring.

But this jubilation was of a very brief duration — 24 hours, to be exact.

The following night, the club headed to the Milwaukee in a contest pitting the new first-place Western Conference team against one of the league’s new shocking powerhouses amidst its own fight for conference supremacy, the Milwaukee Bucks. Coming out victorious was obviously a tall task as the Bucks entered the contest with a 12-4 record and only one defeat at home out of nine contests in the young season.

The outcome was a crushing 43-point defeat from a team that had just taken the reins of the top spot in the West, only to surrender that same title just one night later. Lillard and McCollum would put up 22 points each, but received near minimal production from the supporting cast. Opposing superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo would notch one of his best performances of the year with a 33-point, 16 rebound double-double, just one assist shy of a triple-double.

It was an off night in one of the hardest environments to compete in within the entire league. It wasn’t a respectable defeat, but there was room for understanding from the Portland faithful. The next contest, however? Not so much.

The issues and controversy surrounding the Golden State Warriors in recent weeks were publicized and known by basketball fans everywhere. Following an injury to Stephen Curry that sidelined the two-time MVP, the reigning two-time NBA champs were amidst a spiral ignited by turmoil between superstars Draymond Green and Kevin Durant, leading to the first four-game losing streak under head coach Steve Kerr.

At the end of the day, this is still a super-team that arguably no other in NBA history can compare to, but if there were an opportunity for redemption following a beatdown for the Blazers, it was against a reeling Golden State squad. Needless to say, the contest out in Oracle Arena was one you might have wanted to tuck the kids into bed early in fear of scarring young minds with such a violent display.

Two nights later and it was more of the same from the Blazers. With Green missing in action and Curry still sidelined, Durant and Klay Thompson did more than just pick up the slack as the superstar duo combined for 63 points on a stellar 25-of-41 shooting. The final score was 125-97, another pounding that made everyone forget any bit of the first-place spot they held earlier in the week.

This was the beginning of a downhill slope for Portland, which has now turned into an avalanche. The latest defeat in the Trail Blazers’ woeful three-game slump came in their return home Sunday, this time against the Los Angeles Clippers, who have somehow performed some type of witchcraft to turn them into one of the top teams in the association right now.

Despite a 30-point performance from Damian Lillard, the Blazers came out pancake flat while also losing Jusuf Nurkic to a shoulder contusion at the half, blowing a lead that climbed as high as 15 points. Rip City was outscored 38-16 in the third quarter alone, as the Tobias Harris-led Clippers lengthened the duration of Portland’s fall from grace (and first place).

In a postgame interview in the Rip City locker room, in which we can only imagine the atmosphere had been turned completely on its head six days since rising to the West’s top seed, Damian Lillard summarized his answer to the media’s questions regarding the three-game streak by simply saying, “I think we’re just hitting a rough patch.”

A rough patch indeed, Damian. For a team that was playing solid basketball, in three games the Blazers have been outscored by 75 points, which is the largest margin of defeat in the entire league for anyone over the past week of play.

Early on, the NBA season has not just surprised most of us, but left our jaws on the floor as team like the Clippers and resurrected Memphis Grizzlies sit atop the West while the Rockets, Washington Wizards and Boston Celtics have been some of basketball’s biggest disappointments. However, this is more incentive for the Blazers to at least manage a victory if nothing else during this three-game stretch against talent they were playing even-level with.

All is not lost for this Blazers group as we sit at the end of November and all 30 teams are just finishing their first 20 games on the year. If there’s any opportunity for a turnaround, it comes Wednesday night in an inter-conference matchup at home against the Orlando Magic, who are reeling after a deflating loss in Oakland.

Orlando sits one game below .500 and fared well against Golden State, leading by 17 in that game before superstar play led a comeback. It will no doubt be a test, but it is one that the now 12-8 Portland Trail Blazers will need to be up for if they want to recap even the most minuscule percent of “energy” they had just last week.