Blazers Face Most Revealing Two-Game Stretch of Season's Remainder

Road games against the LA Clippers and Utah Jazz will tell us a lot about the new-look Blazers.

The Trail Blazers failed their first major test since reintegrating C.J. McCollum and Jusuf Nurkic and adding Norman Powell. At least they won't have to wait long to try and make up for it.

Portland faces its toughest two-game stretch of the season's remainder this week, visiting the LA Clippers and Utah Jazz. Considering the ruthless ease with which Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Milwaukee Bucks dominated at Moda Center on Friday, it's fair to assume the Blazers will fall short against two other teams with legitimate title aspirations. There's a reason Terry Stotts' team will be clear underdogs in both games.

Still, Damian Lillard is looking forward for more opportunities to test Portland's mettle against basketball's best.

"Starting the month off like this, and this being the second part of the season, it's going to be a test for us," a stoic Lillard said after the loss to Milwaukee. "Just to see if we can put it together against the best teams in the league, and do the things that we need to do to be able to compete at that level. I'm excited about the challenge."

Moments earlier, Lillard touched on what's been impossible for even the most optimistic Blazers fans to overlook: Portland's struggles this season when facing the league's top teams.

The Blazers are just 4-9 against teams with a top-10 net rating, per Cleaning the Glass. Their -8.8 net rating in those games ranks last among Western Conference teams currently in playoff position. 

A cursory look into Portland's quartet of high-quality wins sparks more pessimism. Only two of those wins, against the Los Angeles Lakers during opening week and Philadelphia 76ers on February 11, came with the Blazers' opponent at full-strength. Ben Simmons was sidelined for their previous win against Philadelphia, while Clint Capela and Danilo Gallinari missed their victory over the Atlanta Hawks on January 16.

The good news is that Portland is a different team now than it was for all but one of those prior games against top-tier competition. The Bucks – with their breakneck pace, Jrue Holiday hounding Lillard, Khris Middleton's isolation game and the trump card of Antetokounmpo – are an especially terrible matchup for the Blazers, too. 

On paper, at least, Lillard and company should fare better against the Clippers and Jazz. LA can't match Milwaukee's force and physicality; Utah just doesn't have the Bucks' depth of quality individual defenders.

One victory, let alone two, would go a long way toward justifying the hope provided by Portland finally getting McCollum and Nurkic back, then pushing its chips in by trading for Powell. Status-quo struggles against two elite teams, though, would provide mounting evidence that the new-look Blazers are really just more of the years-long same.

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