Ja Morant was the lone bright spot on an awful Blazers team
Suffice to say, the first preseason stint didn't go as expected for the Portland Trailblazers. While the defense was passable, their offense stunk on ice - so horribly, in fact, that they failed to break 100 points in all but two games, and shot below 40% in 4 contests, below 37% in 3. For a team that focused on upgrading the shooting in the offseason, it was a whole lot of freezing water and required a complete rethinking of how their system is set up.
How bad did it get? So bad that Jaylen Hoard screamed at head coach Dwayne Wade on multiple occasions that he was a "dinosaur who played with a damn dinosaur. Get with the times, you old fucker!" and then proceeded to blast Wade and the rest of the coaching staff to the media. "The blame's all on them," said the #3 overall pick. "They need to get their heads out of their asses and get us on the winning track. I didn't come here to play loser ball, and the fans didn't come here to watch this shit."
Chris Bosh released a statement on Twitter that Hoard needed to respect his elders and undergo sensitivity training so as not to be racist to dinosaurs.
Still, amidst the drama of dinos and deadball offense, there were a few perhaps encouraging signs. Ja Morant was the lone starter with a positive ON and the team overall consistently won the turnover battle. Admiral Schofield earned himself a shot to win the backup SF spot after looking intriguing in limited minutes and Finn Delany showed his growth is real by having the least poor performance of the bench players. Cameron Oliver also started off shooting hot and looking very comfortable as the go-to guy on the second unit.
On the downside? Maodo Lo was so putrid, the Blazers immediately put in a bid to sign Buddy Hield in hopes that the 32 year old could help stabilize the backup point guard position. Damian Jones looked lost trying to be the stopper for the second team. Hamidou Diallo and Laurynas Birutis both started uncharacteristically slow in their own shooting efforts.
Still, for all his outrage and fury, there was Hoard averaging 12.8 points, 1.7 blocks, and 1.5 steals, shooting 47.6% from the floor as one of the team's most accurate shooters, and a surprisingly notable 16.5 PER, stopping 96.3% of the drives that came his way with 1.8 TOFC and allowing 0.9 PA/SF, looking every bit the ready two-way player he was projected as defensively.
Wade refused to comment on the Hoard hubbub but did say, "We're revamping our system for the rest of the preseason. Clearly, what we ran last year didn't work. The Indianapolis Star had a very interesting suggestion that we run a fast-paced, downhill attacking setup, so we'll try that this next slate of games and see how things go."
For Portland's sake, they'd better hope it shows some major improvements, or this band will look like one of the worst teams ever despite their talent level.
