The Portland Trail Blazers lost a heartbreaking game to the Chicago Bulls last night, falling to a dagger three-pointer after mounting a 20-point comeback in the fourth quarter. It’s possible that pain is just part of being a Blazers fan.
Pain seldom goes unremarked, though. After a promising 4-2 start to the season, the Blazers have gone 2-7 in their last 9 games. That’s going to cause some grumbling and self-examination, including the question in today’s Blazer’s Edge Mailbag.
Another tough loss in a winnable game. How much does coaching play into all this? I see players making regular mistakes on defense. Do you think it’s just them maybe because they’re young? Or do you think this team is coached well yet? Curious about your thoughts.
A few qualifiers to start with:
Nearly all Blazers games are “winnable” now. That’s to their credit, even if they end up losing them. It’s like the old adage of the baseball shortstop who keeps picking up errors because he’s talented and quick enough to get near plays that normal players wouldn’t even approach, and thus wouldn’t get blamed for missing. The cost of having a chance to win by two every night is also being able to lose by two every night. That’s still better than losing by 14.
The team is not only young, but inexperienced together. Players are going to make mistakes individually. They’re also going to have trouble reading each other sometimes. That’s not going to disappear in a few weeks of play.
Defense is part of the issue. That’s tricky. Great defense is rare because it’s harder than offense. Offense acts. Defense reacts. It requires correct assessment of, and fast-twitch response to, a large variety of possible outcomes. Defense also takes team-wide coordination. Theoretically one player can successfully navigate an offensive set by himself. Successful defense takes five players, in coordination, all the time. One gap at any significant spot on the floor is enough to ruin everybody else’s good work. Whether you’re a brilliant coach or a world-class player, that’s a big ask. For Portland right now, it seems near impossible.
We also need to filter out some of the noise around the Blazers specifically before seeing if we can get a read on Coach Splitter. Some or all of these factors may come into play:
Splitter took over after training camp, under trying circumstances, without forewarning or preparation.
He is still an interim coach. Functionally that works the same as being the head coach. Over the long term, when it comes to interpersonal relationships, exercising authority, and all the “meta” parts of coaching, it’s not quite the same.
The roster construction for the Blazers is not ideal still. They’re playing a lot of small ball. Their centers are young, foul prone, and/or bound to certain styles of play. They don’t have proven scorers. They don’t have a ton of three-point shooting.
On top of all that, they’re dealing with a raft of injuries right now. Every point guard on the roster is down. That’s going to wreak havoc with execution no matter how solid the game plan is.
Here’s the first question when trying to evaluate Splitter: is it more likely that his particular coaching is influencing the things we’re seeing on the floor or that these global and situational circumstances are? There’s no definitive answer, but I think it’s fair to say that the hill Splitter is trying to climb is steep. His voice is passing through waves of background interference, which at least will make it warble more, if not drown it out. You can command a dog to “jump” all you want. If it’s distracted by the ice cream truck and two of its legs are in casts, you’re not going to have much success.
With all of that said, we can make a few observations.
Like Chauncey Billups before him, Tiago Splitter had no NBA head coaching experience before assuming the post in Portland. He did coach a team in Paris. He served as an assistant in Brooklyn and Houston for four seasons. At least he had that. But he’s hardly proven.
It feels like Splitter is still getting used to game management: timeouts, challenges, substitutions. It’s not that he’s wrong in how he handles these things, but it seems inconsistent and rough. (See again the above about injuries, though.)
The Blazers look ok individually, but all season long their reactions to each other have been halting or nonexistent. From the start of the season we observed that initial defensive rotations tended to work well, but after that beginning move, players seemed to stall. We’ve seen point-of-attack defenders make decisions that teammates have simply not responded to. Portland’s offense is rudimentary, dependent on a couple of players in a given possession and a scramble from everyone else. Spacing is spotty on breaks and drives. Any execution beyond the simplest threatens to fall apart. Simplicity and speed are built into the design, but it feels like those are the only approaches, not necessarily the best ones. Minute details are not working right. That’s the kind of problem coaching is supposed to solve.
Even aggregated, those observations are not enough to condemn Splitter, even in the slightest. He and the team need time. It’s no use overreacting to a two-week stretch of mostly losing any more than it was overreacting to his first two-week stretch of mostly winning.
However, I think it’s more than fair to say that the jury is still out on Splitter. There’s no indication at this point that he should become the permanent coach of this team. In fact, some of these factors would argue against it. But we don’t know definitively why things are going wrong, nor how much of it is down to the head coach versus other factors.
The best guess is that the Blazers will wait for a formal change in ownership–probably close enough to coincide with next summer’s change in NBA seasons–to find a long-term coach. Depending upon how the season unfolds, Splitter might be part of that discussion. He probably won’t be the only name under consideration and he may not even be the main one. Moving any earlier, though, would mean making a permanent decision under temporary circumstances.
That’s why the Blazers will probably ride out the year with their interim coach no matter what happens, in any circumstance short of disaster. In the meantime some of that background noise might get filtered farther giving us a clearer look at Splitter’s approach and skill. When we see more of those things, we’ll be able to gauge better how his style and aims will mesh with the team. Until then, we pretty much have to trust that everybody is doing the best they can under trying circumstances and hope for a decent outcome.
Thanks for the question! You can always send yours to blazersub@gmail.com and we’ll be happy to answer as many as possible!