Sitting one game under .500, with the NBA’s worst defense, it’s safe to say that the Portland Trail Blazers have been a huge disappointment to start the 2016-17 season.
The problem, it seems, is that the Blazers aren’t playing with a desperate urgency. Watch their games, and it looks like they’re coasting. And they aren’t good enough to coast.
Making an appearance on The Jim Rome Show, C.J. McCollum called for more overall aggression from him and the rest of the Blazers, per Casey Holdahl of Blazers.com:
CJ McCollum: “We need to play like somebody took our lunch money, like somebody disrespected your mother. I think that’s the type of anger you need have and the aggression you need to have on the court. That doesn’t mean making mad faces or mean faces but it means attacking the glass, strongly attacking the rim when you have the ball on offense. If somebody is about to get a layup, commit that foul and make sure they don’t get the ball up.”
On how a player manufactures that kind of emotion…
CJ McCollum: “I think it just comes from within. You got to kind of psyche yourself out, convince yourself. It’s kind of like when you see guys get going during the game, maybe it’s somebody talking trash to them and they feel like they were disrespected, or maybe it’s an article they read about them, maybe a reporter was dogging them out. It brings you a different type of fire, a different type of rage that you just have to figure out how to get that to come out from within, it’s different for everyone.”
It’s sometimes frustrating for fans to hear players talk about, or hinting at, playing hard. Effort and will and resolve seem like things that can never waver.
But 82 games is a long season, and some of the Blazers are still very new to each other. Shots aren’t falling. Evan Turner hasn’t found his way on offense. Allen Crabbe isn’t the player he was last season. Damian Lillard and McCollum still aren’t the ideal defensive backcourt. Al-Farouq Aminu is injured. The Blazers don’t have a big who can space the floor, finish in the pick-and-roll and protect the rim at once.
All of that factors into Portland’s early-season struggles. Many of the issues won’t be fixed without a trade. But if, as McCollum alludes to, this is a matter of effort or a mindset change, well, then the Blazers should be able to make that adjustment from within.
