The Trail Blazers, after giving most of their starting lineup the night off against Maccabi Ra’anana on Thursday night, are expected to use their two remaining preseason games, both on the road, as a “dress rehearsal.” for the start of the regular season, which begins Oct. 19. But before heading out for their penultimate preseason game of 2022, a Sunday game against the Sacramento Kings at Golden1 Arena, the Trail Blazers held a Saturday practice at their Tualatin facility. A few notes from this practice…
• Results don’t matter in pre-season, but the quality of your opponent does. So while it was fun to watch Portland’s second and third strings smash Maccabi Ra’anana on their way to a 53-point win, it’s also kind of hard to see that it helped a lot to set up for what they will encounter. once the season has started.
So Sunday’s game against the Kings in Sacramento, the same team they’ll face in their regular-season opener, provides a better opportunity to assess how far the Trail Blazers have come since they started. played the Clippers and Jazz back-to-back. games last week.
“We had a couple of good practice days,” Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups said. “It was good to get ready to play a game again against an NBA team where we can kind of play a bit. I’m looking forward to that, but just a lot of cleaning up, reviewing things, trying to relearn a lot of our stuff, so we had a couple of good days.
Billups also noted that he would likely use Sunday’s game, as well as their eventual preseason against the Warriors on Tuesday, as a chance to extend minutes while reducing rotation. It won’t be like a regular season game, but it will be closer than their previous three contests, even though they will see the same team 10 days into a game that will actually matter.
“I just look at it like we’re playing against a team that’s going to be a much improved team,” Billups said. “But it’s pre-season, we’re just trying to work on our stuff. I want our guys to pick up the pace. I don’t care if we play (Sacramento) first.
• We already know who four of Portland’s five starters will be at the start of the regular season. Unless something unfortunate happens in their final two preseason games, Damian Lillard, Anfernee Simons, Jerami Grant and Jusuf Nurkic will all be on the field when Portland’s season kicks off on October 19.
But who will start the season at the small forward is yet to be determined. Josh Hart, Justise Winslow and Nassir Little are all in line to start this season three, with Billups using the preseason as a sort of trial run.
“It’s been a little up and down for everyone, to be honest,” Billups said. “I think Josh has played very well with the unit, I think Justise has played very well with the unit. And you haven’t seen Nas a lot, but we see him every day and Nas continues to feel more comfortable.
Hart started the game against the Clippers, Winslow got the honor against Utah and Little got the call against Maccabi, though he’s also the favorite to start Sunday against Sacramento to see how he plays alongside regular season starters. Little, who Portland selected from North Carolina with the 25th pick in the 2019 draft, was only recently cleared to return to full training activities after undergoing shoulder and groin surgeries in the past few months. last six months, which makes its evaluation a little more complex.
“I’m just getting back into the groove, getting used to playing with the guys, getting used to the atmosphere,” Little said. “I think that’s something that people don’t really take into account. When you’re not playing, the depth perception, the fans, the adrenaline that you have to learn to deal with, I have to readapt to control all of that. I feel like even the last game we played, it gets a little better every game. Just keep building from there.
As is usually the case with NBA coaches, Billups noted that finishing the game is more important than starting and whoever gets the call on opening night won’t necessarily be the starter every time. match.
“All three guys are going to have such a big impact on our team,” Billups said. “He who starts, who knows if he will finish. We just don’t know. But I really like all three guys and I think for us to be a good team, all three of them have to play well every time they play.
• Unfortunately, for a number of reasons, much of the discussion around the NBA this week has revolved around the altercation between teammates Draymond Green and Jordan Poole at a recent Warriors practice, a discussion that has taken on new life with a video of Green punching Poole finding its way around the internet. Almost everyone has an opinion on the incident, whether it’s the fight itself, the footage leaked to TMZ, or both, including Damian Lillard, who grew up a Warriors fan and is a close friend. of Green.
“It’s unfortunate,” Lillard said. “When you spend as much time as we do with your teammates, you want it to be positive, you want it to be respectful. I would be lying if I said there weren’t a lot of hot moments that I saw in my career and I’m sure it’s happened in every dressing room. And while you never want to see that, I think what happens behind closed doors should stay that way. It should be handled properly but it should to stay behind closed doors, so I thought the fact that the video came out was wrong.
Lillard noted that he’s seen teammates brawl both in college and in the pros, but not to the same severity as the incident between Green and Poole. Anyone who’s spent as much time in the game as Lillard knows these things happen, though that doesn’t make them excusable either.
“I think Draymond, who I know pretty well, probably walked away from that situation saying, ‘I probably shouldn’t have done that to my teammate or my team,'” Lillard said. “Jordan Poole was probably walking away from it saying ‘When I pushed someone, I should know something might come back and be ready to defend myself.’ That’s really it.Unfortunate situation but when it comes to that, it’s gone and that’s a shame.