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After Inconsistency, Trail Blazers In Reach Of A Late-Season Streak

03/05/10

  1. Written by: caseyholdahl

    Last year, the Trail Blazers went an impressive 13-3 to close out the regular season. They were award home court advantage in the first round of the playoffs for the trouble. The season before that, they put together the now-legendary 13-game win streak, which, when it was all said and done, paved the way for a mark of 17 wins in 18 games.  Two seasons; two impressive runs.

    But this season, thing have been more uneven. The Trail Blazers are only three games back from the 40-24 record they had at this point last season, and are four games better than the 33-31 mark they held with 18 games to play in the 2007-08 season, so it’s not as if they haven’t been winning games, but they haven’t had much luck when it comes to stringing together a series of wins. The longest winning streak this season happened all the way back in November, and that was only a six-gamer. Two of those wins came against the Minnesota Timberwolves, a team the Trail Blazers haven’t lost to since Ime Udoka, Jamaal Magloire and Jarrett Jack started alongside LaMarcus Aldridge and Brandon Roy back in 2007.

    As with most things this season, the inability to put together an extended winning streak can be blamed primarily on injuries. The six-game winning streak earlier this season ended on Nov. 16 against the Atlanta Hawks, which was the game in which Travis Outlaw broke his left foot (which incidentally was the last game he played as a Trail Blazer). They were close to what would have been a seven-game win streak in late December, but that was undone by a loss to the Sixers on Dec. 28, two games after Joel Przybilla snapped his right patella tendon, prematurely ending his season. But it goes further than specific instances. Having players in and out of the lineup with various injuries has kept the Trail Blazers from finding the consistency a team needs to rattle off a series of victories.

    “We just got into a great rhythm (last season) and we kind of rode that out,” said Brandon Roy. “Whereas this year, I missed a lot of homes games, Greg goes, Joel goes, Nic goes, Rudy goes. So I think we’ve been a little off balance this season.”

    Luckily, there’s still time to put it together. After playing more games than anyone in the league up to this point, the Trail Blazers have a relatively sparse schedule through the last month and a half of the regular season, giving them chances to rest at a time when other teams are tiring out. Nine of their last 18 games are against teams out of the playoffs, teams that, in theory, the Blazers should beat. They have three back-to-backs remaining, but have played very well in those instances, especially in the second night game, so that’s not all that troubling.

    “I think we’re more on the verge of understanding our team, what we have, getting some chemistry,” said Roy. “I sat out 15 games, Camby came in, Blake and Travis gone, so a lot has happened. I think we’re starting to get a feel for what we have. We’re gaining more confidence in one another going forward. I think this is a good stretch for us.”

    But most importantly, they’re finally starting to get healthy. Roy’s hamstring doesn’t seem to be especially bothersome anymore. Nicolas Batum is playing the best basketball of his young career. Rudy Fernandez is rounding back into form. Oden and Przybilla are still on the shelf, but the acquisition of Marcus Camby has soothed some of the pain of playing without a true center for most of the season.

    Aside from having a team that spends more time on the court than the training table, the Blazers could use some of the Rose Garden mojo that allowed them to basically chalk up a “W” nearly every time they played at home over the last two seasons. The Blazers are 20-13 playing in Portland this season, a mark many teams would be happy to take, but after the going 34-7 at home in 2008-09 and 28-12 in 2007-08, both the team and the fans have come to expect more in at the RG.

    “4-1 was great on the road trip but now we’ve got to get back to winning games on our home court,” said Roy. “Not just squeaking games out, but playing well, playing with some energy, making this a tough place to play… We’ve got a stretch here where this month we don’t play a lot of games, but the games we do play at home I think we have to play at a high level, start to get that swagger back in our building.”

    The stakes are high. There’s no way they can relax, even though the they have a four-game lead on the Memphis Grizzlies for the eighth and final playoff spot. And there is still an opportunity to move up the table before it’s all said and done, especially with two home games against the second place team in the West (Dallas), two games against the third place team (Denver) and one game against both the fifth (Phoenix) and sixth (Oklahoma City) place teams. If you’re the Trail Blazers, now is the time to catch fire and string together a series of wins, something they haven’t been able to do … yet.

    “I don’t really like to look back,” said Roy. “My thing is: who’s ahead of us and how can we catch them? Biggest thing about it is we’ve played more games than everybody. We’ve always felt like we control our own destiny. If we win games, we’ll be fine. So I think it’s trying to move forward in the standings because we can still do it. We’re not that far behind teams.”
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