Portland Tied with Oklahoma City atop NBA Northwest Division
The NBA’s Western Conference is loaded from top to bottom. At the top are the San Antonio Spurs a half-game ahead of the Portland Trailblazers and the Oklahoma City Thunder, two teams from the Northwest division.
The surprise of the top three is Portland. The Trailblazers are 28-9 on the season, have won two straight and 6 of their past 10. Against Western Conference foes, Portland is 14-7 and against Northwest division rivals is 5-1.
On Saturday, the Trailblazers defeated the Boston Celtics 112-104. Portland has become one of the NBA’s elite team’s if you look at its record, which is second best in the conference and third best in the NBA.
However, Portland will face its biggest test of the season the end of this week when they face a stretch of four games where they will play the San Antonio Spurs, Dallas Mavericks, Houston Rockets and Oklahoma City Thunder over a five-night period. This short four-game stretch could either cement Portland as a legitimate contender in the West or expose the club as a group of pretenders.
Thus far, this season, the Blazers have had some success versus these teams. Portland is 2-0 versus Oklahoma City, 1-0 versus San Antonio, 1-1 versus Houston and 0-1 versus Dallas.
However, those wins are forgotten and to be considered a contender you need to be consistent, play well and beat the league’s best for validation.
If Portland wants the rest of the league to take them seriously during the second half of the season, if they want to be contenders for the Northwest division and hold home court advantage during the playoffs, they must play well against the elite teams of their own Western Conference.
If Portland has a weakness, and most teams have at least one, no matter how good they are, it is their defense. The Trailblazers are ranked No. 21 in the league in defensive efficiency.
The offense for Portland has carried the club to its current record, but defense is key to win championships in the NBA and the playoffs could expose the defensive deficiencies on the team. Even during the record season against a strong offensive team on the road could make life difficult for Portland.
Portland did finally debut its first round pick of last season C.J. McCollum this week. The shooting guard, who broke his foot on October 5, scored just four points on Wednesday night against Orlando.
Against Boston on Saturday McCollum scored 10 points and looked impressive on both the offensive and defensive ends of the court.
Portland has two strong starters in LaMarcus Aldridge and Damian Lillard, but its bench is ranked No. 25. McCollum will give the bench the spark it needs to help them hold their own when they are spelling the starters.
Portland clearly has the talent to play competitively against the rest of the Western Conference as they have shown so far the first half of the season. However, next week’s four games over five nights will be their biggest litmus test of the season thus far.
Time will tell if they can continue to push the Thunder for the Northwest division title and the Thunder and Spurs for the Western Conference’s best record.
