Charles Barkley understood the pioneers well

At halftime in the Portland Trail Blazers’ game against the Houston Rockets on Thursday night, TNT commentator Charles Barkley lamented Portland’s lack of urgency in the 104-101 final loss. Money quotes his analysis: “They play like whatever happens, happens.”

This caused quite a stir in Blazers Land, the subject of today’s Blazer Edge mailbag.

Dave,

Did you hear what Chuck said about us last night? What is happening to them? He doesn’t watch the Blazers I watch. What do you think?

Oliver

Well, he’s not wrong.

This is nothing new. This may be one of the first times that a national figure has paid enough attention to say so. We’ve been saying similar things back in the days of Brandon Roy, when Portland showed up to the 2009 NBA Playoffs with briefcases and wetsuits, ready for a day at the office, while the veteran Houston Rockets turned up. presented with helmets and jackhammers, ready to demolish. Obviously, there is no direct correlation between this era and this one, but it does raise the possibility that part of the mindset is cultural.

I don’t think it’s a Portland thing as much as an underdog mentality. Outsiders are not rewarded for their achievements. They are commended for more thanachieve. Those are two different things.

Achievement involves a standard set for measuring success, applied equally to all participants. The most common standard applied in the NBA is the championship. The Lakers, Celtics, Heat, and teams that have won it a lot (or at least recently) operate by this metric. They achieve the goal or not. Anything that does not succeed is not success.

The problem, of course, is that only one team wins the title each year. The other 29 teams also need a reason to play. The divide between the haves and have-nots has been exacerbated by the NBA’s “star system” – and perhaps factors inherent in the sport – leading to relatively few teams winning the majority of league championships. The Heat could perhaps pretend they’re on their way back to the top, but what about the Kings? Or, for that matter, the Blazers?

In this “glory for a few” environment, fans, the media and the league itself have joined forces to praise the underdog. Outsiders do not need to succeed on the basis of commonly accepted standards; they just need to do better than you might think. It became the new “success”. Everyone conspires there. The league can keep the spotlight on a small number of glitzy players and teams. The media hype more than the Chosen Six each season, spinning stories of hope to feed the content mill. Fans can pretend their team is as good as anyone else because these evil types of media predicted 10 too few wins or because their team beat the World Championships on a random Wednesday night. Everybody wins.

Except, of course, the underdog. The best of them reach a certain level of success – usually the first round of the playoffs, sometimes the second round if it’s a good year – before being summarily ousted by teams playing for real stakes. This, too, is good for everyone involved. The winning franchise wins, the underdog franchise can brag about having a good season it had because it exceeded its targets, and no one is asking the league why only six teams can win a title.

“Overachieve” is a seductive word. There are “achievements” just like winning teams do. It contains the prefix “over”, which stands for above. Worshiping that hasn’t driven the teams into over land, however. Instead, he created a long-term subclass of NBA franchises satisfied with the word itself instead of actually winning.

The Blazers show the characteristics of being in this class. They boast of an era-defining superstar in their starting lineup for nine years, but they’ve only passed the second round once, an unheard-of event that ended in a squash in the hands of the Golden State Warriors. Yet every season the official word has been how successful they’ve been, how everyone doubted it and how much hope they have for next season when they do eventually break through.

In 2018, CJ McCollum hosted Kevin Durant on his podcast. McCollum said the team was doing well and winning, saying they were “right there” below the top tier of teams, which Durant and the Warriors were in at the time. Durant summarily fired McCollum, saying the Blazers were playing “like an eighth seed” and had no chance of winning a title. McCollum protested that “anything can happen”. To date, this is not the case.

How many times can you hear things like this before you suspect that hope is not about the product, it is the product?

Charles Barkley never won an NBA title, but he did play in the Finals teams and was an all-time talent. He’s also retired now and understands that there is no way to go back. I have heard lamentations in Barkley’s comments as well as critics. The Blazers theoretically have the potential to be great, if nothing else, as Lillard and McCollum are one of the best backcourts of this era. But they play as if the goal is “good enough” instead of being good. They play like they’ve been told that outperforming and succeeding are the same thing. They play like they can hope for a title because it would be a great story. It doesn’t work that way.

Injuries color the immediate image, of course. With five players sidelined and Derrick Jones, Jr. in and out, the Blazers could have played their hearts out against the Houston Rockets and still lost. But it wasn’t just a one-night commentary, nor a single game issue.

Personalities matter too. Lillard and McCollum are both sweet, cool. Brandon Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge were the same way. They are sober, elegant, more James Bond than Incredible Hulk. Take Bond’s gadgets away, however, and he’s likely to lose. Barkley was crying for the Blazers to find out the Hulk reserves when Bond Stuff wasn’t working, to get fat, green, and angry and take over the game. They don’t have that. They never did.

Personally, I think Portland would be well served for their Hulk. They have to give up chemistry first, the “everyone is nice to each other” vibe. Culture will survive the addition of a counter-cultural personality. They need someone who has passion, experience and a willingness not to be nice when the going south, whether in a game or in a week. They need the half-off balance player who will be the first to come out of the trenches in all situations, charging madly into the opponent’s line, forcing everyone to follow. They had that back in Clyde Drexler’s time with Buck Williams and Jerome Kersey. They had it at the time of Bill Walton with Maurice Lucas. It is missing now. Because of this, the Blazers lack the ability to unbalance the pitch and sidestep the narrative. They mostly win the matches they were going to win, claiming the occasional surprise or dam from Dame Time, and coming home happy anyway.

If this is to be the epitaph of this time, so be it. Lillard was awesome and they were a fun team to watch almost every night. Barkley makes just one final stint as the Ghost of Christmas Present at Portland’s Scrooge, suggesting that if they don’t change their ways, the view from beyond the end isn’t as satisfying as they think it is.

I don’t have much hope that the organization will listen, but Barkley’s message is correct. Too bad he can’t get dressed and give them what they need.