During the break from the Portland Trail Blazers game against the Houston Rockets on Thursday night, TNT commentator Charles Barkley lamented Portland’s lack of urgency in the 104-101 loss. The money quote from his analysis: “They are playing as everything that happens, happens.”
This caused a small stir in Blazers Land, the subject of today’s Blazer’s Edge Mailbag.
Dave,
Did you hear what Chuck said about us last night? Whatever happens, is everything okay with them? He’s not watching the Blazers I watch. What do you think?
Oliver
Well, he is not wrong.
That’s not news. It may be one of the first times that a national personality paid enough attention to say so. We have said similar things since the Brandon Roy era, when Portland appeared in the 2009 NBA Playoffs with briefcases and suits, ready for a day at the office, while veteran Houston Rockets appeared with helmets and jackhammers, ready to demolish. Obviously there is no direct correlation between that era and this one, but it does bring the possibility that part of the mentality is cultural.
I don’t think it’s a Portland thing as much as an underdog mentality. Underdogs are not rewarded for performing. They are praised for oncatch up. Those are two different things.
Achievement presupposes a defined standard for measuring success, applied to all participants equally. The most common standard applied in the NBA is the championship. Lakers, Celtics, Heat and teams that have won a lot (or at least recently) operate by this metric. They reach the goal or not. Anything short of success is not success.
The problem, of course, is that only one team wins the title each year. The other 29 teams also need a reason to play. The gap between rich and poor has been exacerbated by the NBA’s “star system” – and perhaps by factors inherent in the sport – leading to relatively few teams winning most league championships. The Heat may be able to claim they are returning to the pinnacle, but what about the Kings? Or, by the way, the Blazers?
In this “glory for the few” environment, fans, the media and the league itself have joined forces to praise the underdog. The oppressed need not reach on the basis of common standards; they just need to do better than you think they would. This became the new “success”. Everyone conspires on this. The league manages to keep the spotlight on a small number of flashy players and teams. The media begins to exaggerate more than the Chosen Six each season, spinning narratives of hope to feed the content factory. Fans can pretend their team is as good as anyone else’s because those mean media types predicted 10 fewer wins or because their team won the World Championship on a random Wednesday night. Everyone wins.
Except, of course, the underdog. The best of them reach a certain level of success – usually the first round of the playoffs, occasionally the second round if it is a good year – before being summarily expelled by teams that are playing for real bets. This is also good for everyone involved. The winning franchise wins, the oppressed franchise boasts the good season they had because they exceeded expectations, and no one asks the league why only six teams can win a title.
“Overachieve” is a seductive word. It has “achievement” in it, just as the winning teams obtain. It contains the prefix “about”, which means above. Loving him didn’t take teams to lands of superior achievement, however. Instead, he created a long-term subclass of NBA franchises satisfied with their own words rather than actually winning.
Blazers show marks of being in that class. They prided themselves on a superstar who defined an era in their starting lineup for nine years, but spent the second round only once, an unrepeatable event that ended in a squash at the hands of the Golden State Warriors. Still, with each season, the official word is how well they did, how they all doubted them and how much hope they have for the next season, when they finally manage to stand out.
In 2018, CJ McCollum introduced Kevin Durant on his podcast. McCollum said the team was doing well and winning, saying they were “right there” below the top team level, which Durant and the Warriors were at the time. Durant dismissed McCollum briefly, saying that the Blazers played “like an eighth seed” and that they had no chance of winning a title. McCollum protested that “anything can happen”. Not to this day.
How many times can you hear things like that before you suspect that hope is not on the product, that is the product?
Charles Barkley never won an NBA title, but he played for teams in the final and was an all-time talent. He is also retired now and understands that there is no turning back. I heard regrets in Barkley’s comments as well as criticism. The Blazers theoretically have the potential to be great, if not because Lillard and McCollum form one of the best backcourts of this era. But they play as if the goal is “good enough” instead of good. They play as if they have been told that overcoming and achieving are the same. They play as if they can wait for a title, because it would be a beautiful story. It doesn’t work like that.
Injuries color the immediate picture, obviously. With five players out and Derrick Jones Jr. in and out, the Blazers could have played everything against the Houston Rockets and still lost. But this was not just an overnight comment, nor is it just a single game issue.
Personalities are also important. Both Lillard and McCollum are smooth, cool. Brandon Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge were the same. They are discreet, elegant, more James Bond than Incredible Hulk. However, take out Bond’s devices and he will likely lose. Barkley was crying for the Blazers to discover the Hulk’s reserve when Bond Stuff was out of order, to get big, green and angry and take control of the game. They don’t have that. They never did.
Personally, I think Portland would be well served to negotiate with the Hulk. They need to set aside chemistry first, the “everyone is nice to each other” vibe. The culture will survive the addition of a countercultural personality. They need someone with passion, experience and a willingness not to be kind when things go wrong, whether it’s a game or a week. They need the semi-unbalanced player who will be the first to leave the trenches in all situations, investing madly in the opponent’s line, forcing everyone to follow him. They had it in the Clyde Drexler era with Buck Williams and Jerome Kersey. They had it in the Bill Walton era with Maurice Lucas. It’s missing now. Because of this, Blazers do not have the ability to unbalance the field and invert the narrative. They mostly win the games they were going to win, trumpeting the occasional surprise or dam at Dame Time, and returning home happy anyway.
If this is going to be the epitaph of this era, so be it. Lillard was brilliant and was a fun team to watch most nights. Barkley is just making one last pass as the Ghost of Christmas Present for the Scrooge of Portland, suggesting that if they don’t correct their habits, the view beyond the end will not be as satisfying as they think it will be.
I don’t have much hope that the organization will listen, but Barkley’s message is adequate. Too bad he can’t get dressed again and give them what they need.