Watch out, Trail Blazers — it's a trap!
LOS ANGELES — Less than an hour after the final horn sounded in the Portland Trail Blazers‘ 115-95 loss to the Los Angeles Clippers in Game 1, Damian Lillard climbed onto the bus and immediately called up his collection of plays he keeps in a notes file on his digital device.
“[The Clippers] trapped me even harder and are trying to take me out more than they do in the regular season,” Lillard said at Blazers practice on Tuesday. “At one point, I would’ve had to force up like a crazy, deep shot to get an attempt. I was trying. I was running fast. I was trying to turn the corner and it was like, ‘A defender is here; a defender is there.’ It was tough to get an attempt up.”
Lillard culled his notes for play sets that specifically placed him off the ball, which he feels is the best antidote to the Clippers’ stifling pressure that took him completely out of his game.
“I think that’s the adjustment you make,” Lillard said. “We’ve got a lot of sets where I can still handle the ball but I can get rid of it and be the guy coming off screens and flares and pindowns and stuff like that. Obviously, that’s what we’ll have to get to because they’re not going to let me be myself in pick-and-rolls at the level that I would like to.”
This has been the primary theme around the Trail Blazers since they got waxed in Game 1: How can they combat the Clippers’ aggressive trapping? All season long, the Trail Blazers have excelled at finding quality shots in the half court, much of it originating with a pick-and-roll for Lillard. Cut off that pick-and-roll and all those actions that Lillard enumerated — flares, pindowns and “stuff like that,” which includes curls and staggers — go with it.
“We need to execute our pick-and-rolls a little bit better,” Portland coach Terry Stotts said. “We need to attack maybe a little bit differently. We need to get some movement sets and free [Lillard] up off the ball.”
Getting Lillard off the ball will help relieve some of the pressure, but as Stotts pointed out, Portland will still need its bread and butter, and that means making the Clippers pay for their traps. Because if a defense is deploying two guys on Lillard, by definition the Trail Blazers have an advantage beneath him.
“If two guys meet me at half court, that means it’s 4 on 3,” Lillard said. “I’ve got to hit [Mason Plumlee], hit Ed [Davis], and trust them to make the next play to the weak side or get to the rim. Trust [Al-Farouq Aminu] throwing the ball back or knock down jumpers. And make them think twice about giving me so much attention. And maybe when they do worry about what’s going on when I get rid of the ball, I can turn the corner, I can get a couple of looks.”
A 4-on-3 advantage is all well and good, but Aminu will have to do better than 2-for-8 on catch-and-shoot opportunities, and Plumlee will actually need to record a field goal or an assist as the roll man, something he didn’t do Sunday night.
More than anything, the Trail Blazers need to work the ball to the second side, which they did so effectively in the regular season. This is the beauty of having a backcourt featuring both Lillard and CJ McCollum — a pair of guards who can both initiate offense and shoot. The Clippers’ trap complicates that ball movement because it isn’t easy for Lillard to send the ball to the weak side when DeAndre Jordan’s tree branches are in the way and Chris Paul is nibbling at him.
“[The Clippers] were locked down,” Lillard said, “Even when [McCollum] was on the weak side, his man wasn’t the guy a lot of times that was coming over and leaving him. They weren’t going to give up an open 3 to him or let him catch and play 1-on-1 with his man. We’ve got to get into movement sets, a lot of stuff with us off the ball. We’ve got to do some pick-and-roll stuff, because that’s what we’ve always done, but we have to get into more off-the-ball actions.”
In other words, the Trail Blazers need to get back to being themselves.
