Trail Blazers embrace positives in close defeats to contenders

Sometimes good losses can be seen as small victories.

This state of mind certainly applies to Portland Trail Blazers‘ last two defeats against the two best teams in the Western Conference: 128-120 Wednesday night against Oklahoma City and 119-114 at Minnesota on Monday.

At least, that’s how Anfernee Simons sees it.

“In terms of team development, yes,” he said after the loss to the Thunder.

Simons, 24, has witnessed a lot in his six seasons with the franchise, including the highlight of reaching the 2019 Western Conference Finals in his rookie season.

Now one of the faces of the franchise, Simons is enjoying a rebuild that has the franchise with a 17-43 record, fifth-worst in the NBA.

This record is also largely due to the team being in second place with the most games. lost to injuries in the NBA (213).

So losing to Minnesota (43-19) and Oklahoma City (43-19), while frustrating, also comes with a sense of progress.

“You look at it as a quote-unquote victory, in the sense of being able to compete with them and stay close,” Simons said. “Obviously, as a competitor you say to yourself: no, forget it, I want to win. As a team, I thought we played well enough to win the game. Obviously towards the end we had some turnovers and they made some shots. But it’s a good team. That’s what we’re trying to do. »

This season, it’s a long-standing story that injuries have hampered the team’s ability to get where it wants to go, even in a season with low expectations.

The Blazers played Wednesday without Deandre Ayton, Scoot Henderson, Malcolm Brogdon, Toumani Camara and Shaedon Sharpe. In Minnesota, Jerami Grant was out with those five, as was Matisse Thybulle, who, along with Grant, returned to face the Thunder.

This situation has presented an interesting conundrum: while the Blazers have played well with players who would normally be deep backups or out of the rotation, how does that actually contribute to the overall goal of developing a team identity when the main players are absent?

Ideally, the Blazers would play a lineup with some rotation of Simons, Henderson and Sharpe at guard with Malcolm Brogdon mixed in. Sharpe Camara at small forward. Matisse Thybulle would see minutes at guard and small forward. Grant at forward supported by Jabari Walker. Ayton in the center supported by Duop Reath.

It’s a 10-man rotation. The others would serve as replacements as coach Chauncey Billups sees fit.

Unfortunately, the Blazers haven’t played many games while even most of those above are healthy.

“It kind of messes with how we want to develop as a team and pick a base rotation,” Simons said. “If it changes every week, then we have to pivot and figure it out from there.”

The makeshift lineups Billups was forced to use won two games in Memphis this weekend. However, the Grizzlies lead the NBA in games missed due to injury with 368.

Still, it’s evident that the increased minutes for Walker and Reath, as well as additional playing time for Kris Murray, Rayan Rupert, Ashton Hagans, Dalano Banton and even Justin Minaya, made for solid play.

“We’re starting to see these guys and all of us are really just starting to really know how to play with each other,” Billups said. “How we want to play what we want to do. Fewer mistakes are made.

The Thunder game meant a lot to the Blazers as Billups said he wanted to see his team build on Monday’s performance.

“We wanted to come out and just validate that,” he said. “I tell our guys all the time, no one respects you in this league. You have to go and earn it. And when guys come here and we play teams, they should be really good at beating us if we play well. It doesn’t matter if they have our record or one of the best in the league, they should feel like they must have played really well to beat us and played really hard to beat us. And if that happens, we did our job and hopefully we won this game. And if not, we can live with the results. »

The only problem is that as the regular players improve, the younger players who have stepped up will be relegated to the background. Meanwhile, regulars continually find themselves adjusting to those around them rather than building chemistry with their scheduled rotation mates.

On the other hand, non-regulars have the opportunity to show that they can be counted on in a pinch. And that certainly has value.

“I think everyone came here ready to play,” Simons said. “Obviously, they are young players and sometimes there will be bad nights. It’s just the development process. Some nights won’t be pretty. Some nights are going to be nice. But as long as they play hard and learn from every mistake they make or every game, then that’s all that matters. “