Portland Trail Blazers biggest weakness re-exposed in Lakers series
Carmelo Anthony, Portland Trail Blazers.
An unforgiving opponent
Los Angeles had the best record in the west, beating them in a seven-game series was a challenging task at the outset. Then it was announced Collins would miss the series due to an ankle injury. With two seven-footers in the Lakers lineup, Blazers could afford to play Melo at the three, head coach Terry Stotts started the series with Wenyen Gabriel in Collins’ spot. He played hard but was overmatched.
Stotts then went Whiteside and Nurkic in the starting lineup. Unfortunately, Portland’s revamped version of the twin towers never worked well together. To make matters worse, Damian Lillard injured his knee in Game 4, which finished him for the series. Gabrial was unable to go in Game 5 because of an injury that cut the Blazers roster to nine.
Small Forward
First of all, no team can overcome losing a talent like Lillard. Even so, C.J. McCollum, Gary Trent Jr., and Anfernee Simons formed a nice three-man backcourt rotation. Next, a lack of quality depth shouldn’t be confused with attrition. But who was hurt and where exposed the depth problems. Portland is not deep enough up front.
There is a huge hole at the three-spot. Trevor Ariza will be 36 next season, and it’s more likely he gets bought out for $1.5M rather than the Blazers pick up his $12M option for 2020-21. Hood is coming off of Achillies surgery, which requires a long rehabilitation. His return is up in the air. Anthony is a pending free agent. The 36-year-old said he wants to return to PDX and probably won’t be too expensive. But how much does he have left in the tank? It looked like Melo was starting to wear down in March, before the break.