Trail Blazers are finally ready to take off the training wheels: ‘There’s a different feel’

After watching the Portland Trail Blazers run circles around his veteran, playoff-tested team for two quarters of an exhibition game, during which his defense looked like a matador waving a red cape, Steve Kerr couldn’t help but leave impressed.

“We weren’t ready,” the Golden State Warriors coach said. “We were careless with the ball, they were flying by us every play. That’s a good team — they’re going to be good — they’re long and athletic, (coach) Chauncey (Billups) has done a great job with them. I think the last 20 games last year they were like top five defensively in the entire league. They’ve built their roster, they have a lot of length and athleticism. So that first half, they put on a show.”

The show fizzled in the fourth quarter, after Billups pulled most of his key rotation players, but the point had been made: This is not the same old rebuilding Blazers.

For the first time in years, Portland is chasing victories instead of lottery ping pong balls. And while Las Vegas oddsmakers and NBA prognosticators are hardly predicting that the Blazers will suddenly ascend into the elite in a loaded Western Conference, there is buzz inside the organization that its talented young core is, at the very least, ready to take another step forward and compete for a spot in the NBA Play-In Tournament.

There’s a new vibe around these Blazers, much like when a parent removes the training wheels and watches their kid speed off on their own.

“There’s a different feel,” Billups said. “You can tell that our group is maturing a little bit. And what we went through last season, we started to get some wins and play well. They’re hungry for that. It was fun. So, yeah, I do sense a different little feeling around our group, around our guys, around our building, our fans. But we’ve also got to understand, like, it doesn’t just flip and change that quick. The Western Conference is as good as I’ve ever seen it.

“So we’ve got to be realistic about it, as well, and know that I want us to get better and keep taking steps. And we will.”

Indeed, the likes of Oklahoma City, Denver, Minnesota, Golden State, Houston and the LA Clippers will make life difficult for the Blazers. But if they do take a step forward, it will come via a style Blazermaniacs are unfamiliar with, a style borne out of necessity, a style that aims to capitalize on the team’s youth, athleticism and length.

The Blazers are going to play fast. They’re going to run. They’re going to shoot early and often. They’re going to play defense — lots of defense — and it will feature full-court pressure. And above all else, they’re going to play hard.

When Billups showed up the first day of training camp sporting a black Blazers shirt with the words “Make ‘Em Uncomfortable” plastered across the back, it was a not-so-subtle message to his team and the rest of the league. The Blazers are no longer an easy out.

“I always saw us as a really talented team,” forward Deni Avdija said. “But after sharing the court with some of the guys and seeing how fast we are, how well we defend, how much we play together, I feel like I’m really excited to start the journey. I really think the sky’s the limit for us. I think we saw it last year with Indiana, a young team that kind of plays fast, really had a lot of success. And I think we’re not shy off that.”

When coach Chauncey Billups showed up the first day of training camp sporting a black Trail Blazers shirt with the words “Make ‘Em Uncomfortable” plastered across the back, it was a not-so-subtle message to his team and the rest of the league. (Photo by Alika Jenner/Getty Images)Getty Images

At the very least, the Blazers will share a similar breakneck style.

The seeds for the new system were planted two seasons ago — long before Oklahoma City and Indiana popularized them — when the Blazers were in the thick of their roster rebuild. Billups had a young team in desperate need of a new identity and he was searching for any tactic, any scheme, that might light a spark.

Billups had long wanted to lead a team built around defense and depth. And since the Blazers were long on youth and athleticism, and lean on experience and offense, he decided to experiment with full-court pressure.

“I said, ‘Let’s just pressure them, let’s see what happens,’” Billups said. “You make teams play ugly, you challenge every single thing that they do, and maybe they’re not so efficient, or maybe they’re not as good as we thought they were. I did it with the mindset of, ‘Let’s just find out. Why not?’ That’s kind of the space that we’ve been in the last couple years. Let’s just start trying stuff.”

The experiment finally started to blossom into an identity last spring, when the Blazers surged to a 23-18 record in the second half of the season.

Along the way, forward Toumani Camara became the Blazers’ heart and soul, Avdija grew into a force, rookie Donovan Clingan emerged as the center of the future and a host of young players, including Shaedon Sharpe and Scoot Henderson, started to show progress. The Blazers boasted the NBA’s third-ranked defense during the hope-inspiring finish.

Since then, they’ve added more defense and leadership (Jrue Holiday), more speed (Blake Wesley, Caleb Love), more familiarity (Damian Lillard) and more enticing youth (Yang Hansen).

The Blazers are going to struggle to score in halfcourt sets, especially when Holiday isn’t on the floor. There are going to be plenty of nights when their so-so long-range shooting betrays them. And if their defensive rebounding doesn’t evolve from a weakness into a strength, it doesn’t matter how stout their defense becomes.

These warts, in part, contributed to Billups’ decision to lean on speed and defense. As he said earlier in the month: “There’s no reason to be young and athletic and versatile and play slow.”

The Blazers unveiled their new breakneck pace in that exhibition opener against Kerr and the Warriors, and they barely let up during four games, leading all NBA teams in pace during the preseason. But they also gave up more fast break points (15.7 per game) and registered the sixth-worst defensive rating (114.1) of any team in the preseason. Needless to say, they remain a work in progress.

But it should be an entertaining work in progress.

Billups wants his team to play so hard and fast, he has told them he plans to stretch his rotation to 10 or even 11 players deep. He announced Tuesday that Holiday, Sharpe, Avdija, Camara and Clingan will open the season in the starting lineup. But Billups plans to substitute liberally and could, perhaps, end up looking less like a basketball coach and more like a hockey coach employing line changes.

“We just want everybody to play so hard,” he said. “I told our guys this (last week) in practice, if you play really hard for five minutes in an NBA game, you should be tired. There are some guys that can play harder for longer, but by and large, you should be tired. I’ll make the changes, get you in, get you out. Boom. But that’s how you just kind of wear on teams. And that’s kind of like where we’re at and kind of what we’re doing.”

It would be unrealistic to expect the Blazers to make the playoffs in the West.

But after languishing in the NBA lottery for years, they should no longer be a pushover, either.

“They’re very aggressive,” Kings coach Doug Christie said. “I know Chauncey. He’s a monster. He likes to get after it. And we respect that. I think you’ve seen a lot of that in the league, and it’s good. It’s good for competition. It’s a good style of basketball … and they should be a good team.”

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