The Portland Trail Blazers played a great second quarter against the Oklahoma City Thunder on Friday evening. Unfortunately, scoring 44 in one frame wasn’t enough to stop the Best in the West. Oklahoma City came out of the locker room to strangle the Blazers, forcing a turnover and walking out with abandon. The result was a 137–114 win for the Thunder.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander led the Thunder with 30 points on 12-18 shooting. Jerami Grant led the Blazers with 17.

Here are some factors that determined the outcome of the game.

Preliminary objection

Before we even start, there should be a rule that the visiting team cannot choose uniforms that clash with the home team’s floor, having the same effect as having a cheese grater on your optic nerves for 48 minutes. Say, Thunder.

Super easy to score

The Thunder starting lineup, 1-5, knew exactly where and how they wanted to score tonight. In fact, they were ready to take advantage of whatever the Blazers defense gave them. Go under the scenes of the three? They would hit it. Leave SGA in single coverage? He was on the track within two seconds. Take the middle? The ball went to the wings for an open jumper. That kind of firepower is scary. Portland just doesn’t have it.

Deni Avdija

On the last episode of the Trail Daddy podcast, I talked a little about Deni Avidja and his offensive woes. He actually keeps looking for the pass, but opponents play him right away. They turn him into a one-on-one scorer. He just isn’t. Deni had 11 points tonight on 5-10 shooting from the field, partly because he shook himself free for other types of goals.

When the Blazers allowed Avdija to run the ball down the floor and attack from downtown, he returned to better form. He really shone when he got the ball on the break or on the weak side. If he has space in front of him, he is good at converting.

Getting Avdija rolling while the guards remain productive will be one of the conundrums Portland will have to solve this year.

Still, you might wonder if Deni isn’t a candidate to step onto the bench when Shaedon Sharpe returns from injury. Fortunately, he is equally capable of impacting the game as a starter or as a reserve. Less charitably, the Blazers simply need more offense at this point than Deni can provide, even on good nights like this.

Screens

Screens proved to be a huge advantage for OKC tonight. Simply put, they deploy them powerfully and effectively and use them with the utmost precision. It’s pretty amazing to see the most obvious and ubiquitous play in NBA basketball produce consistent results just because the Thunder dribblers wait for the screen to set firmly and then walk right past the screener, creating no daylight remains for Portland’s defenders. The old-school Utah Jazz used to play like this. Guess what? It still works, even against an improved Blazers defense.

Portland finally tried a solution: their rotating lineup. That stopped them from hanging behind screens so often. But once the Thunder saw the switch, they were ready to exploit mismatches, bringing in smaller players and pulling centers to the three-point arc.

It should be noted that the Thunder are currently the youngest team in the NBA. Portland’s excuses for being young disappear in the face of OKC’s flawless execution. It’s not just age. It’s about talent, confidence, attention to detail and coaching.

Threes and the Third

One of the other things we mentioned on the Trail Daddy podcast was that both of Portland’s wins this season showed the same trend: shooting 40% or better from the arc. Tonight they even stayed half with the Thunder via that exact mechanism. But when the threes disappeared, so did their chances of winning. The Blazers attempted just two threes in the third period. They also committed a slew of turnovers and managed just 12 total shots. That led to a 21-point Thunder advantage with the score tied at the half.

When Portland started the fourth by missing six of their first seven threes, that was all they wrote.

The Blazers went 15-35, 42.9%, from beyond the arc tonight on the flurry in the first half. Oklahoma City shot just 38.8%, but on 49 total attempts from beyond the arc, it accounted for 19 goals, four more than the Blazers managed.

Free throws

As bad as things got, the Blazers had one big advantage tonight. They enjoyed foul shots, partly because of their dedication to getting the ball in, partly because it was just one of those nights. The Blazers made 21 of 31 foul shots. The Thunder attempted only 19 and hit 16.

It should be noted that the referees changed their tune in the third period after OKC started complaining loudly. Losing that lead didn’t cause Portland’s collapse, but it certainly amplified it.

Brute force the solution

That last paragraph pretty much shows how the Thunder handled Portland’s threat. Sometimes you develop a useful algorithm to come up with a solution to a thorny problem. Other times you simply tell the computer to run trial after trial until it finds the right answers. The latter approach proved beneficial for OKC tonight.

Portland shot 47% from the field and the aforementioned 43% from the three-point arc, both more than enough to pull out the win on a normal night. They were instead blown out as the Thunder attempted 95 shots to 83 for the Blazers, while Portland committed 19 turnovers, including 6 from Avdija. 12 more attempts from the floor, 14 from beyond the arc, proved too much for Portland to compensate.

Rayan Rupert

We didn’t get to mention many of the deeper players for Portland this year, but let’s give Rayan Rupert some credit. He shot quickly and decisively on his way to 14 points on 4-7 shooting from distance. Rupert certainly looked like a rotation player tonight.

Feeding Ayton

Deandre Ayton was one of Portland’s lone bright spots in the third period as he found shots off the edge of feed and lobs. This also turned out to be a bit of a curse. Oklahoma City smelled the tactic and ended up breaking up the passes before they arrived, leaving Portland to throw the ball low in vain only to find fumbles and interceptions. It’s still encouraging to see Ayton go in as the guards find him. He shot 7-11 from the field for 14 points. He only had 5 boards, but Thunder star Chet Holmgren played just 18 minutes with 6 points and 1 rebound. (To be fair, Holmgren had a whopping 5 blocks in that short time. Wow.)

Next

Box score

The Blazers travel to Phoenix to take on the Suns, Pacific tomorrow night at 7:00 PM. Buckle up.