Erik Gundersen 9y

Trail Blazers still shooting high

In Portland, the afterglow of Damian Lillard's buzzer-beater to defeat the Houston Rockets hasn’t ended. All of the fan videos, courtside Vines and your friend's friend's stories about where they were when "The Shot" happened has turned perhaps the most memorable moment of the 2014 NBA postseason into a local legend. That the Trail Blazers were dismantled in the next round by Kawhi Leonard and the eventual champions is only an addendum, if that.

The city has fallen back in love with its team. After the “Jail Blazers” years, all the losing seasons that followed, the injuries that struck down Greg Oden and Brandon Roy in their primes, and some more losing, Portland seems squarely behind the Blazers again. A group of 13,500 showed up to a recent Fan Fest, which Terry Stotts, an NBA coach for over 20 years, said was the most he'd seen at such an event.

A lot of that has to do with Lillard. In just two seasons, the 6-foot-3 point guard who hails from little-known Weber State has risen into a bona fide star. Only Oscar Robertson, Allen Iverson, LeBron James and Tiny Archibald have totaled as many points and assists in their first two NBA seasons as Lillard, and although he was left off Team USA’s final roster for the FIBA Basketball World Cup, Lillard added “All-Star” last season to a résumé that already includes a Rookie of the Year win. He’s even started to show some star power off the court, appearing in commercials and video game covers, and presenting at the ESPYs (in a Dr. Jack Ramsay-style plaid jacket).

Lillard’s exploits mean even more locally, especially when contextualized by the ones that came before his. Six years earlier, Roy was the one beating the Rockets at the buzzer and earning praise as the Blazers’ next leading man. LaMarcus Aldridge, who rose to prominence alongside Roy, has even said that his new running mate is in the “Brandon Roy category.”

But Roy’s celebrity never reached the type of fever pitch that Lillard finds himself in now. With a more subtle game and a less ferocious on-court persona, Roy, who also played his best years before watching basketball evolved into its current, Internet “sharing”-happy state, mostly toiled in relative obscurity. Lillard is the type of player made for going viral. And with an in-his-prime Aldridge by his side, the Blazers might have a core that not only recreates what they lost to injuries, but even surpasses it.

“When Dame came in, I don’t want to say it was like B-Roy but it was kind of the same thing,” said Nicolas Batum, one of four players still on the team who played with Roy. “Now we have this duo we should have had with B-Roy, but now we have Dame.”

But just how much praise Lillard and the Blazers should be receiving remains a point of contention. Though he and Aldridge helped turn the Blazers into one of the big surprises in the league last season, leading them from 33 wins in 2012-13 to 54 in 2013-14, one big question has lingered over the team since they started ripping off wins last winter: Are they for real?

Most still aren’t sure. Oddsmakers don’t consider the Blazers to be serious contenders heading into this season.

"I feel like we are the hunter and the hunted," Wesley Matthews said. "We're still climbing, we still want to get certain places but we know we aren't going to sneak up on anybody. But at the same time, we still feel like we have some hunting to do like we did last year."

There is indeed work to be done.

The Blazers’ bad bench only looked good at times because of a historically bad one the previous season. Their starters played nearly every game and more minutes than only one five-man unit in the NBA. Veterans Chris Kaman and Steve Blake were signed this offseason via exceptions to help, but the pair is on the wrong side of 30 and entering their 12th seasons in the league.

And then there’s the defense. Portland’s offense ranked among the league’s five best last season at 108.3 points per 100 possessions, but the 16th-ranked defense was often pointed to as proof of its inviability. Stotts has taken notice, and has made it the main focus in training camp. Lillard, of course, remains confident in the team’s ability to turn that around, too.

"We did it one time," he said. "To say we are an elite team we have to keep proving it. I think what we did learn last year was that we can be one of those teams."

They learned Lillard can be one of those elite players as well. But despite all of the personal successes in his young career, the 24-year-old point guard feels like he has something to prove. Lillard went ice cold after sinking the Rockets; the San Antonio Spurs pushed him off the 3-point line and he struggled to get back on track. After watching the five-game series twice over the summer, Lillard said he thinks the Blazers simply ran out of gas.

As if that wasn’t enough motivation for his third season, Lillard still seems miffed by the Team USA snub. "Once I was turned away from making the team, I took it as 'you're not good enough," he told reporters at media day.

That type of edge -- surly, chip-on-the-shoulder demeanor -- has defined Lillard’s Portland tenure. And it’s spread to the rest of the team. Stotts certainly has a lot to do with the Blazers’ ability to succeed in tense moments, but Lillard's steady hand and quiet bravado, combined with the brashness of Matthews, give the Blazers the type of scrappiness few other teams can offer.

Whether or not it can translate to scrappy defense remains to be seen. And that’s precisely the uphill battle the Blazers face this season.

Despite all the good they did last season, despite all plaudits Lillard has received for his late-game heroics, they have to prove themselves all over again. They’ll be confined to a glass ceiling until they can prove otherwise.

At media day, Portland general manager Neil Olshey called his starting five “vanilla,” a metaphor he likes for getting the job done. But good might not be enough in a conference stacked with better options.

The Blazers have their star in Lillard, and that alone has seemed to satisfy the basketball-hungry fan base in Portland. But will that be enough for the rest of the nation, too?

Erik Gundersen covers the Trail Blazers for The Columbian. Follow him, @blazerbanter.

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