Portland Prognosis: How Did The Trail Blazers Get So Bad?

After a solid playoff run last year, the Portland Trail Blazers have struggled to find any consistency this season. Here are some of the reasons why

In late December, the Portland Trail Blazers are in the playoff picture. This isn’t a shock for a team that made it to the second round last season, and has its sights set on even higher ground this year. However, the fact that Portland is in the 9th slot, at 13-19, is both surprising and concerning.

For the entirety of the young 2016-17 season, Portland has slowly been slipping further and further down the ladder. The reasons for this drop-off aren’t immediately obvious, and there are several reasons why the Blazers have fallen so far.

Per Basketball-Reference, Portland boasts the league’s sixth-best offense in terms of rating (as of December 23rd). At 110.5 points per 100 possessions, the Trail Blazers are slightly ahead of San Antonio, and clearly ahead of Utah, Boston, and Denver.

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While a team with talented scorers like Damian Lillard and C.J. McCollum may have higher aspirations than the sixth best offense in the league, this rating doesn’t raise any red flags. In terms of scoring, then, Portland is absolutely fine.

For the Trail Blazers, the problems (somewhat predictably) come on the defensive end. This team always suffered from defensive problems, but the exact numbers are somewhat appalling.

Again per Basketball-Reference, Portland has the 30th ranked defense in the league. It isn’t close, either. Allowing 114.1 points per 100 possessions, the Blazers are not only the worse defense in the league, but are significantly behind the Lakers, the Nets, and the Timberwolves.

This porous defense does a lot to explain why Portland has struggled so much this season. Lillard and McCollum have never been good defenders, but the team’s problems have gotten worse and seem to have been compounded by their free-agent signings. As odd as it may seem to say, this team has gotten lucky, too. Their pythagorean win total is 12, meaning that a team with these statistics would usually be a game worse than the Blazers currently are.

To be a solid, mid-level playoff team (so, last year’s Trail Blazers), teams usually need to be around the top five on one end of the court and at least league average in the other. This isn’t a hard-and-fast rule, but teams that can either score or play defense well can usually skate by with average production elsewhere. As the sixth-ranked offense, the Blazers are good enough as a scoring team. But it’s almost impossible to see a team with the worst defense in the league making a solid playoff run.

There isn’t a clear path for the Portland Trail Blazers to get better, either. The team may be able to drag its defense into the top-25 with better schemes or attention, but much of the defensive problems are personnel-related. There aren’t many good defenders on this team, which limits their future potential. Whether through trading or in the draft, this is something that the Blazers need to address.

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Portland is a fun team to watch, and their struggles are concerning for a team that’s capable of at least more than this. There isn’t a clear path for them to get better, but it seems likely that the team’s management will try at least something if things don’t get better soon.