Portland Trail Blazers: Chauncey Billups’ influence takes shape on the court
Rob Ryan
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It is now over a week since the trade deadline, which left a lot of fans scratching their heads. Is this the team Chauncey Billups needs?
Several of the Portland Trail Blazers‘ top scorers, including CJ McCollum, were sent to other teams at the NBA trade deadline. In return, Portland received bench players, draft picks, and eventual cap space.
Four games later, and what was supposed to be a team tanking for lottery picks now looks like a team that has turned their season around. Here are three observations that have stuck out to me since the trade deadline about how coach Chauncy Billups is putting his stamp on this team.
Defense
All the offseason talk about improving the Blazers’ defense is finally showing up on the court. There were hints of it throughout January before Nassir Little‘s injury. However, if you take out the Denver loss where they gave up 140 points, in the other 11 games, Portland gave up 107 points per game. The Trail Blazers went 7-4 in those 11 games with a defense that would have put them 11th in the league.
In the last four games, that defense, with the new players and minus Little, give up an average of 106 points per game. That would put Portland at 8th in the league defensively. Swapping out CJ Elleby in the starting lineup for Little, could this be a potential top-five defense?
During Chauncey Billups’s run as the starting point guard, the Detroit Pistons prided themselves on their defense. They won a championship in 2004 and made the Eastern Conference Finals in six consecutive years.
Those Pistons teams were essentially the Eastern Conferences’ version of the San Antonio Spurs. But, of course, we all know how successful the Spurs were for nearly two decades. This is exactly the defensive intensity that Billups wanted to bring when he took over as the Portland Trail Blazers head coach.
Let's watch these highlights again, shall we? ? pic.twitter.com/Ua2kUYrke8
— Portland Trail Blazers (@trailblazers) February 17, 2022