Mike Ehrmann / Associated Press
To be fair, the Portland Trail Blazers’ 100-93 Game 1 win over the Los Angeles Lakers on Tuesday night is whatever you want it to be, the rare singles achievement acting in the service of more than one lap, both minor and major.
It’s about Blazers’ late-game hit production and how their record doesn’t reflect their threat level. Damian Lillard arms them with a mythical crunch-time weapon, a superstar who is in range roughly as soon as the ball is inbound. They can win this series.
These are the Lakers, imperfect and vulnerable. Having two megastars in Anthony Davis and LeBron James doesn’t guarantee them anything. They have to worry about the rotation of the guard, their three-point brick shot, Davis’ propensity to take long two junkies, and his absence of range beyond the arc. They could lose this series.
This is about how the Blazers and Lakers finished a game, a single solitary match in a row of, perhaps, seven. It has little to do with what happens next, a prelude that matters something but means nothing. The Lakers haven’t played in nearly a week, following a hiatus of over four months. The Blazers will witness Lillard’s disappearance from 35 feet or more at the end.
This is game 1 which is somewhere in between, which is why Los Angeles reflects and Portland rejoices, but no evidence of anything profound or irreversible for either of them.
The Lakers are not 5 of 32 from the gravel distance. I’m not 20 out of 31 from the foul line (64.5%) bad. Danny Green (2 out of 8 out of three) will shoot better. Alex Caruso (1 out of 6 overall) will shoot better. Kyle Kuzma, still competing in defense, by the way, has shown that he will hit more three (1 out of 5). Kentavious Caldwell-Pope won’t go 0 of 9 every game, and even if he does, coach Frank Vogel won’t always inexplicably replace him for Caruso along the stretch.
The blazers has a banged CJ McCollum and can only get away with putting Carmelo Anthony and Gary Trent Jr. on LeBron so many times, and it won’t be so many times. Ditto for playing Jusuf Nurkic and Hassan Whiteside at the same time. Nurkic has extended his range behind the rainbow, but that frontcourt falls on the louder end of the spectrum, even when the Lakers are playing Davis in tandem with another great.
This is LeBron wearing so many hats in another playoff match, not finding a one size fits all. On the one hand, a triple-double of 23 points, 17 rebounds and 16 assists (career high in the playoffs) is objectively obscene. On the other hand, its efficiency – 9 out of 20 in total, 1 out of 5 from the depths, 4 out of 7 from the charity gang – and the pass-first mindset could be part of the problem. The Lakers need him to try his shot sooner and more often.
Then again, if he’s not going to set the table, who will? (Plus: focusing only on LeBron’s score is always an oversimplification.) The Lakers couldn’t constantly bury their three with him feeding them. No one else will do better. Plus, Los Angeles doesn’t really have anyone writing it.
Rajon Rondo is cleared to play after recovering from a broken right thumb, but has not spoken since 10 March, more than five months ago. Davis is someone who dominates the flow of offense, not someone who creates it. Caruso is too extensive in the role of initiator. Dusting off Dion Waiters for more than 73 seconds is not the answer.
This is Game 1 which is so many things to so many different people depending on the many lenses through which it could be viewed. And in verifying so many notions, preconceived or not, there is no consensus.
All we know for sure is that, no, the Blazers and Lakers aren’t working on a typical first-round streak. This may say more about the circumstances than how they fit together. The NBA squeezed into a close to regular season, but these teams are still being hijacked 24/7 following a lengthy layoff, all of which have lost key players.
It is different from firing game 1 altogether. Everything that has already been discussed is fair game.
Without a doubt, the Blazers don’t feel like a regular No. 8, if only because Nurkic, their second best player of last season, didn’t return from compound fractures to his left leg until Disney World rebooted. And indisputably, the Lakers have a slimmer margin for error than your team in first place. They weren’t particularly deep at first, and their best point guard defender, Avery Bradley, decided to get out of the bubble.
Ultimately, what little we’ve seen in this series is more about these Lakers. Their struggles are an extension of what has plagued them at Disney and, to some extent, throughout the year.
They ranked 21st as a percentage of three points during the regular season. Their camera problems aren’t new. They finished 18th in terms of mid-court efficiency for the year and have been penultimate since entering the bubble. Their heavy execution from Game 1 is also nothing new.
Whether the Lakers can smooth out these wrinkles before they really come back to haunt them is a matter of course. They don’t have the staff to turn into sweet shooters assassins and out-of-game flamethrowers, but they’re not without options.
Ditching the whole Davis-at-the-4 charade might be a good place to start. The Lakers offense held up all year with him in power, but the dual-big combinations didn’t go so well during the restart. Los Angeles is a combined minus-48 in the 97 minutes he played with JaVale McGee.
This move alone isn’t changing everything. But it is something. And the Lakers have to do something, not something drastic, but something so painful, obviously more sensible than what they are doing now.
Keeping the course and hoping for better nights from the outside may not be the option. It may not end up important against the Blazers. It will definitely be in potential pairings with the Houston Rockets, Los Angeles Clippers or Denver Nuggets later in the playoffs.
And yes, it might as well matter now, also for the sake of escaping this series.
Unless otherwise noted, statistics courtesy of NBA.com, Basketball Reference, or Cleaning the Glass. Salary and cap-hold information via Basketball Insiders, Early Bird Rights, and Spotrac.
Dan Favale covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter (@danfavale), and listen to hers Hardwood shots podcast, co-hosted by Adam Fromal of B / R.
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