TUALATIN, Ore. — With teams around the NBA resting key players down the home stretch of the regular season, its evident that the Portland Trail Blazers, in the midst of a tight playoff race, don’t have that luxury.
Rest assured that players would rather have all of these games matter than be part of a pointless slog until the final game of the season. But that made Tuesday’s maintenance day and Wednesday’s light practice all the more important.
“It was mainly geared towards Boston and some of the actions that they run,” head coach Terry Stotts said about Wednesday’s practice. “I tried to work on some our execution offensively. It was relatively short. Everybody is concerned about rest, in case you were wondering.”
With some rest, probably not enough to squelch the appetite for fans who have seen enough from the San Antonio Spurs to know rest matters in the modern game, the Blazers prepared to face the team that handed them one of their worst losses of the season.
The Boston Celtics are in a tight playoff race of their own, jockeying with Atlanta, Miami and Charlotte to see who can get up to the 3rd seed in the Eastern Conference.
The Celtics beat the Blazers 116-93 back in Boston on March 2.
Boston’s physical, tenacious style of defense, led by guards Avery Bradley and Marcus Smart, gave the Blazers fits.
Jae Crowder, Boston’s do-it-all power forward and is a major key to their success, reportedly practiced in Portland and could play.
The Blazers offense, currently rated as the 6th-best in the NBA, was suddenly out of answers.
A 14-5 turnover advantage for the Celtics is one place to start.
“We need to take care of the ball,” CJ McCollum said. “We had a lot of turnovers that led to fast break opportunities. Offensively just continuing to move the ball, take advantages when they switch and use some of their pressure against them.”
How the Blazers will use that pressure against them remains to be seen, but they will likely be throwing a different look at them than they did the last time these two teams met.
Stotts is still sticking with his philosophy that nothing is “set in stone” with Moe Harkless in the starting line-up, moving Al-Farouq Aminu to power forward.
Yet, it would be a borderline shock, even measured against Stotts’ penchant for off-the-radar line-up decisions, if he went away from that line-up now.
It has a net-rating of +19.1 according to NBA.com. It’s their best line-up this season in terms of net-rating among those who have recorded at least 100 minutes, by over five points per 100 possessions.
Translation: it’s their best line-up and it’s not even close.
They’ve found something that really works at just the right time, even if finding it came at the cost of the Meyers Leonard injury.
The Boston beatdown is something that the Blazers still remember well. But as for motivation, they have plenty already.
“We got 7 games left each one is important,” CJ McCollum said. “We know what’s at stake here going into the playoffs. We have to compete.”
