"Cash Me Outside, How Bout Dah?"
Here is just another reminder why it's important to keep valuables out of your unattended car at all times. Early Sunday morning, one day before tonight’s game between his Portland Trail Blazers and the visiting Atlanta Hawks (10:30 PM Eastern, TNT, 92.9 FM in ATL), center Mason Plumlee got to his car, parked in the garage of his condo, only to find it had been broken into, wallet and checkbook gone.
Plumlee’s day would only grow more complicated once he arrived at the Blazers’ practice facility. Turns out, he had just been traded, and needed to fly out to Denver by Monday, so the deal for Nuggets center Jusuf Nurkic (and a 2017 1st-rounder, which would be Portland’s third) could be completed. Canceling bank accounts and flying to a new city without one’s ID and credit cards; that can’t be fun.
What has complicated things for Portland (23-31) is that they sit one full game out of the only likely available playoff seed (8th) in the Western Conference, despite having the second-highest salary base in the whole NBA this season ($119.7 million, behind only the Cavs’ $129.5 million), plus the highest load of committed salaries next season ($134.4 million, more than Cleveland’s $123 million). The Blazers got no help from the Hawks (31-23) on Friday night, as Atlanta’s insistence on Falconing Up during the second half in Sacramento helped the Kings to remain just a half-game behind Portland entering tonight’s NBA action.
The Blazers were one of the more stable franchises in terms of player movement over the past summer, but the free agent additions to their core, led by guards Damian Lillard (career-highs of 26.1 PPG, 90.3 FT%, and 4.9 RPG) and C.J. McCollum (career-highs of 23.5 PPG, 52.5 2FG%, 89.8 FT%, and 3.7 RPG, have not panned out. Guard Evan Turner broke a bone in his shooting hand last week and will sit for at least a month, while center Festus Ezeli’s offseason knee procedure has failed to make him healthy enough to play all season long.
The team matched Brooklyn’s four-year, $75 million offer for restricted free agent Allen Crabbe (career-best 10.6 PPG, 43.1 3FG%), but the swingman’s defensive struggles threaten to make Atlanta’s 4/70 deal for Kent Bazemore look like a stroke of genius.
Crabbe was joined on the bench by Atlanta native Al-Farouq Aminu, who conversely had struggled to hit the outside of a barn until the past few games (47.6 3FG% in four games this month). For now, Blazers coach Terry Stotts has elected to replace them on the top line with Moe Harkless (career-high 10.5 PPG) and Noah Vonleh (3.3 PPG, 40.9 FG%, 56.1 FT%).
Blazers owner Paul Allen is quite accustomed, over the years, to paying for big-ticket gambles that don’t seem to pay off. But it’s not likely that Allen will continue to pay full freight for a lottery team. What is likely is that a sell-off of tradeable assets, which began with Plumlee (Portland’s leading rebounder and shot-blocker, second-leading assist maker, and third-leading scorer), will continue up until the trade deadline passes.
The bruising Nurkic is unlikely to be ready to play this evening, leaving duties in the pivot to Ed Davis and Meyers Leonard, on what was already a porous Blazers defense with Plumlee (109.0 D-Rating, 27th in NBA). If they make decisive plays in the paint, Atlanta’s Dwight Howard and mainstay Paul Millsap should be able to feast against a team that fouls (31.6 opponent FTAs per 100 possessions, 3rd-most in NBA) a lot more than they get stops (12.9 opponent TOs per 100 possessions, 5th-fewest in NBA).
The task for the Hawks’ backcourt players is to allow Lillard, McCollum, and Crabbe, Portland’s top-scoring trio, to earn the lion’s share of their buckets by way of well-contested jumpshots without sending them to the free throw line. They must disallow the Blazers’ trio from helping their beleaguered frontcourt mates on the glass. Thabo Sefolosha (groin) remains questionable to play tonight, likely meaning more yeoman's work will be needed from rookie DeAndre' Bembry.
On offense, Dennis Schroder, Tim Hardaway, Jr., and Kent Bazemore need to score on off-ball cuts to the basket, and also wear down Portland’s defenders with relentless peripheral movement along the perimeter, getting open for passes emanating from point guards and bigs in the paint.
After a dismal conclusion to Friday night’s affairs in Sacramento, we will see if the Hawks, like Plumlee, learned a lesson about leaving themselves exposed for late-night thefts.
Let’s Go Hawks!
~lw3
