During its recent roadtrip, the Blazers played inspired basketball and managed to come away with some huge wins despite its injury-decimated roster. But as last night's game against Philadelphia made clear, this is now a team with some obvious weaknesses, weaknesses that other teams will actively try to exploit. You can bet that the teams coming up on the Blazers' schedule will be studying tapes of the second half of last night's game, when the Sixers big men dominated the Blazers in the paint and stifled them on the defensive end.
Barring a major trade, Portland is going to have to get creative to win consistently with its current personnel. When you have no true centers or small forwards (Martell is more of a shooting guard), there's really no other choice. The coaching staff has tried to plug replacement parts into the machinery, having Juwan Howard and Jeff Pendergraph fill the roles previously held by Oden and Pryzbilla. And that worked for a little while. It will still probably work on nights where the Blazers are shooting really well as a team. But other teams adjust. They watch tape. They spot weaknesses and they exploit them.
The same is true on offense. Jerryd Bayless has been a huge sparkplug for the Blazers, helping to fill the scoring void left by the many injuries. But his recent scoring explosion has also put him squarely on other teams' radars. They're adjusting their defense to deal with him. As Dave at Blazersedge notes:
[T]he league knows about him now. As they did with most of the critical Blazers, [the Sixers] defended him perfectly. They knew to not do a thing with him on the dribble drive, as that would probably result in a foul. Just shadow him and wait...wait...wait because once he starts his forward progress he's not going anywhere but down the lane to put a shot up. When he tries to score, strike and block the shot. After he got capped early he tried to compensate with the jumper. It wasn't falling. And without Bayless producing that bench scoring gets pretty thin.I noticed the same thing last night. And it actually dates back to the Denver game. Denver was guarding Bayless the same way. The bigs in the lane would let him go through, avoid contact, and then use their length to swat away his shot. Jerryd is going to have to adjust as well. He's going to have to alternate the timing of his shot, make use of floaters and shot-fakes to become less predictable. He could learn by watching some old tapes of the person he was guarding last night, Allen Iverson.
But more than anything that Jerryd has to do personally, the Blazers as a team have to get creative on offense and make things easier for our scorers. For starters, and I feel like a broken record saying this, the Blazers need to be more aggressive in transition. Players like Andre Miller, Jerryd Bayless, Lamarcus Aldridge, and Martell Webster were born to run and look great in transition. Aldridge may be the most skilled transition big that I've ever seen, and he rarely gets to use that set of skills. Miller is fantanstic in transition, as we saw last night when he completed two perfect full-court outlet passes leading to easy layups for Webster and Dante Cunningham. Bayless is blazingly fast and much less likely to get blocked if he can get out ahead of the defense.
Philadelphia is actually the perfect model for how to incorporate a transition game into an otherwise slow-paced offensive strategy. The Sixers generally play at a slow pace, but they take advantage of transition opportunities to score easy buckets, as they did last night. The Blazers can do that too. They really can. It just requires the coaching staff putting a real emphasis on it.
In the half court set, it's clear that Roy and Bayless both do better when the Blazers clear the lane and create room to drive. I think that's why both have played significantly better since Greg Oden's injury. Oden was constantly trying to set up position in the low post, which of course meant that there were always one or two defenders right around the hoop. By contrast, Joel Przybilla tended to stay around the top of the key on offense, creating more space for Brandon (and Jerryd) to operate. They same is true of Juwan Howard.
Given the very limited low post-scoring abilities of Przybilla and Howard, I completely understand this strategy. The problem is, it's not as effective as it could be because teams don't respect Przybilla or Howard's shooting ability and thus cheat off of them. If the Blazers really want to create room for Roy and Bayless to operate, they need put players at the 4 and 5 positions who command respect from the perimeter. McMillan tries to do this when he goes small, playing Aldridge at the 5 and Webster or Cunningham at the 4. But those lineups also give up a lot on defense, with Roy or Webster forced to guard the other teams' power forward and Aldridge forced to guard center.
What I'd really like to see is a lineup that features Roy and Bayless in the backcourt, Webster at the wing, and Aldridge and Tolliver as the bigs. Everyone in that lineup can hit a three (Tolliver was shooting over 40% in the D-League before being called up). With that lineup, the bigs can position themselves way out on the perimeter, creating all kinds of space for Roy and Bayless to operate. If the defenders cheat in towards the hoop, someone will always be wide open for a shot. And unlike the small lineup that Nate's been using from time to time, this lineup doesn't give up nearly as much size on defense. Aldridge and Tolliver have the height and size to at least avoid major mismatches inside, and Roy and Webster can cover the wings.
I'm not saying this should be the starting lineup or anything. I just think it should be tried for a stretch here and there, to see if it works. I'm somewhat perplexed, to be honest, that Nate hasn't given Tolliver more playing time given the Blazers' current situation. He got burned a couple times in his only previous appearance (4 minutes), but I think he probably deserves a little more of a chance to prove himself. Tolliver's ability to hit an open three is a potential game-changer, something that differentiates him from every other healthy big on the roster. If he can hit a couple of those in game situations, and play passable defense, his presence on the court could really make things easier for our guards and allow them to aggressively attack the basket.
The other thing that could help in this regard, as I noted the other day, is if Aldridge can add a three point shot to his arsenal. Aldridge is 4 for 6 on the season from three point range and has been shooting well on long-distance twos. The problem with long-distance twos, however, is that they are inefficient and, as a result, defenses are generally willing to concede them. If you want to consistently lure defenders away from the paint, you need to be able to take and hit a three. If you can do that, the defense has to commit someone to you and that defender will not be in a position to stop any drives to the paint. If Aldridge can convince teams that he is a threat to hit from three point range, it will make life much easier for our guards.
UPDATE: Well, so much for that idea. The Blazers waived Anthony Tolliver today and assigned Patty Mills to the Idaho Stampede, their D-League affiliate. I suppose it's possible that there is some kind of financial chicanery going on here and that Tolliver will be re-signed to a new temporary contract. Doubt it though. Given that the Blazers applied for an additional injury exemption, they may have someone else in mind and didn't want to wait to sign him.
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