No game on November 18th is going to make or break a team’s season. That said, the Portland Trail Blazers face a pretty important contest tonight when they face the Phoenix Suns at the Moda Center at 8:00 PM.
The Blazers are coming off of a 1-4 road trip, their first long outing of the season. They didn’t play horribly. The losing can best be described as, “Coin flips don’t go your way sometimes.” As has been true all season, the score was close in most of their outings.
In professional sports, though, losses eat at the foundation of your team, particularly when the roster is young. The Blazers aren’t just embarking on a new season. They’re bringing a new style, playing with new roster members, organizing under a new (and unexpected) interim coach. They need a positive feedback loop to affirm their course forward amid all of this untried uncertainty. Each person in that uniform needs to know that what they’re doing makes a difference. That’s necessary in order to keep up the energy and commitment to sustain Portland’s peculiar attack, which doesn’t rely on one or two bankable stars as much as ten men playing all-out for 48 minutes, rain or shine.
There’s no better feedback than winning games. And Portland faces a winnable opponent tonight.
That may not be so over the next couple weeks, however.
The Blazers have a modest matchup with the Chicago Bulls on Wednesday. Playing on the second night of a back-to-back shouldn’t hurt them too much if they’re at home. After that, Portland draws the Golden State Warriors, a team they ran past (and blew out) in the last matchup. Standing at 9-6 currently, the Warriors shouldn’t be beyond the Blazers’ reach.
Once the Warriors game is done, though, the schedule gets treacherous. The Blazers will face the Oklahoma City Thunder, the Milwaukee Bucks (perhaps without Giannis Antetokounmpo), the San Antonio Spurs (certainly without Victor Wembanyama), the Thunder again, then the Toronto Raptors, Cleveland Cavaliers, and Detroit Pistons. There’s definite potential for a 1-and-x run through that group. Yes, there’s potential for more wins too, if things go right. But if things ARE going to go right, waiting for that rough stretch doesn’t make sense or build confidence. Portland needs them to go right now.
Carrying a 3-0, or at least 2-1, record into that first OKC game would take the pressure off of the tough slate of opponents. Nursing a 1-2 homestand—a 2-6 overall stretch—prior to the matchup with the champs doesn’t inspire the same confidence and goodwill.
That’s why tonight’s game with the Suns takes on a little extra significance. Neither this outing nor the next two weeks will determine Portland’s fate. Young teams will streak and slide at multiple points during any given year. But the Blazers need to make sure their season-starting success can endure the attrition of the NBA’s winter months. That means not falling to the back of the standings.
The mini-turn around, if it’s going to happen, should start tonight. If the Blazers handle the Suns, they’re looking at a potentially great week ahead. If they lose, there’s plenty of pressure on the Chicago and Golden State games to save and/or resurrect them.
Obviously the first scenario is much better than the second. Let’s hope Portland can come up with a great game, generating positive momentum instead of forcing themselves to avoid the negative.
