The Utah Jazz did not face the Portland Trail Blazers last summer at the NBA bubble. But the Jazz clearly paid attention to how well Damian Lillard and the Blazers performed during last season’s restart in Orlando, Florida.
The Jazz demonstrated clear intentions during Wednesday’s season-opening game for both teams to not allow the bubble MVP to defeat them with an explosive performance.
That plan worked to perfection. The Jazz virtually erased Lillard from the game and won 120-100 at the Moda Center. Lillard went scoreless in the first half and finished with just nine points on 4-of-12 shooting. But could he have done more to assert himself offensively?
Lillard, after the game in which he made just 1 of 7 three-point attempts, said he must play more aggressively regardless of how Utah (1-0) or any team chooses to defend him.
“And that’s what I’ll do going forward,” Lillard said.
The Jazz paid Lillard relentless attention early on, limiting him to five shot attempts in the first half. Utah blitzed Lillard with double teams and trapped him to get the ball out of his hands.
“I wasn’t really expecting that,” Lillard said.
Lillard obliged, which was out of character. Lillard said he normally would search for his shot more aggressively even if the opposing team is looking to limit his shot attempts. But that never happened.
“Once I realized they started to trap me, I kind of just started to accept it,” Lillard said.
Lillard did not score his first basket until the 10:23 mark of the third quarter.
“Dame is an amazing player, so we have to make sure he doesn’t get anything easy,” Utah center Rudy Gobert told reporters. “We tried to make him uncomfortable. We tried to get physical with him. I think we did a great job as a team trying to make sure he was not able to get in a good rhythm.”
Lillard responded by making passes to open teammates in hopes that they would make the Jazz pay.
Unfortunately, the rest of the Blazers (0-1) were not up to the challenge, and the Blazers fell behind rapidly. Portland trailed 65-44 at halftime. The Blazers never threatened in the second half.
According to Lillard, after Utah built a big lead, responding became increasingly difficult because the Blazers failed to consistently get stops, which limited them mostly to half-court sets.
“It helps when you don’t have it going and you’re getting stops, and then you can push it in transition and they don’t have a chance to set up a defense and they are kind of off balance,” Lillard said.
Damian Lillard passes the ball out to the wing as the Portland Trail Blazers tip off the 2020-21 NBA season against the Utah Jazz at Moda Center on Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2020. Sean Meagher/The Oregonian
The Jazz certainly were never without balance on offense. The Jazz shot 48.1% from three-point range in the first half before cooling off a bit in the second half. Portland shot just 40.2% from the field with 21 of its 37 field goals coming in the second half after the game was in hand for Utah.
Portland throughout the game settled for too many mid-range shots, something Lillard said the Blazers had hoped to avoid. They would prefer to shoot threes or get to the basket. Compounding the problem was that Utah outrebounded Portland, 59-40.
Certainly, this loss was not on Lillard.
“I think it was a combination of their good defense and us just missing some shots,” Portland guard CJ McCollum said.
Yet, it is unusual to watch a player of Lillard’s caliber — who averaged 30 points per game last season and is fully capable of scoring much more — finish with just nine points while his team gets routed.
“They didn’t really do anything that we hadn’t seen,” Blazers coach Terry Stotts said regarding Utah’s defense. “But we need Dame to be aggressive and when the ball kicks out, we’ve got to have guys ready to make shots and to take shots. And to a degree, we didn’t finish around the basket as well as we needed to.”
Portland’s defense clearly requires time to congeal. That means the Blazers’ offense must be explosive or similar fates await.
Last week, the Blazers were blasted 126-95 and 129-96 during their final two preseason games at Denver. Then they scored just 100 on Wednesday. This is a team that averaged 114 last season.
After the game, Lillard said his head was up. He doesn’t get down in these situations.
“Never too high or too low,” he said.
But it’s apparent that Portland’s offense has little chance returning to bubble form without Lillard being Lillard and igniting the rest of the team.
“We’ve got some challenges in front of us,” Lillard said. “And I think it’s showing on the floor. We’ve just got to figure it out really soon.”
— Aaron Fentress | [email protected] | @AaronJFentress (Twitter),@AaronJFentress (Instagram), @AaronFentress (Facebook).
Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories
