National Basketball Association

Nicolas Batum and Portland face the music in Memphis

Published Apr. 22, 2015 6:33 p.m. ET

foxsports

By Joe Mags

I’m pretty sure nobody really thinks Nicolas Batum meant to hurt anybody with his recent motivational message that happened to include an inflammatory remark about Spanish players. It was a joke. People joke all the time. Let’s move on, right?

Well, of course. This story is ultimately pointless. Marc Gasol said it best because he’s the best. “I don’t have no take,” Gasol told ESPN. “And if I don’t take anything out of it, I don’t expect any of you guys [in the media] to take anything out of it. As far as I know, none of you guys are Spanish. So I hope nobody is bothered by that.”

Exactly. Who cares that it’s awkward for Batum to dangle anything ethnocentric, or anything that could possibly be misconstrued as anti-Spanish, after this unforgettable highlight from the Olympics?

Batum is allowed to be funny, or more accurately, to joke around with his teammates. It’s obvious he never intended for this tongue-in-cheek jab at Spanish basketballers to leave the locker room. The French-Spanish basketball rivalry is just that — rooted in sport. Batum’s explanation that the joke’s inception dates back multiple years with former Spanish teammate Víctor Claver is reason enough for all of us to drop it.

The story is dead now, tossed aside for Rondo, Rondo, Rondo and the firing of Scott Brooks. So goes the NBA postseason — there is always something going on. Thankfully for the Blazers, that means we’re back to talking about the series at hand. No more distractions.

On the other hand, after watching what Memphis did to Portland in Game 1, I’m not convinced the Blazers want us talking about that, either.

The Grizzlies are known for their bruising frontcourt, and the brothers-from-another-mother were up to the task on Sunday night. Zach Randolph had 16 points and 11 rebounds, and Gasol had 15 and 11 with seven assists. Their classic high-low offense was clicking, and on the other end, Gasol quarterbacked the defense, coaxing Portland into a gnarly 33.7 percent shooting performance.

Randolph is a nightmare for LaMarcus Aldridge. While Aldridge certainly did his thing (32 points and 14 rebounds), Randolph takes away everything that comes easy to him against the majority of power forwards he sees. Z-Bo clamors for every inch of turf; he bumps Aldridge before and after every touch; and despite giving up what seems to be half-a-foot, Randolph’s psychology deters Aldridge from truly unlocking that height advantage.

When Aldridge lost his cool late in the first quarter, earning himself a technical foul, you could see the smile underneath Z-Bo’s snarl. “I got you wrapped around my finger, young blood.” Aldridge got his 32 points, but he needed 34 field goal attempts to do so. He made only 13 of those 34 shots. Memphis will take that kind of stat line from LMA.

The Grizzlies took a 24-point lead into the fourth quarter, and they led by as many as 29 points. Mike Conley wasn’t supposed to be the same player we’ve come to appreciate in Memphis, what with his sprained right foot and all. However, Conley scored 16 points in 23 minutes. Whenever Conley needed a blow, backup Beno Udrih was more than game to pick up where his teammate left off. The journeyman scored 20 points (9-for-14 FGA) and collected seven rebounds and assists each over 24 minutes.Beno. Udrih.

This is the real trouble for Portland. Short of Oklahoma City, no team in the NBA has been ransacked more by injuries than Portland. It goes beyond losing Wes Matthews for the season; Portland may very well be accepting volunteers to defend the perimeter before this series wraps up. Arron Afflalo had to miss Game 1 with a shoulder injury; Dorell Wright broke his hand and has missed two months; and Allen Crabbe logged 15 minutes on the wing on Sunday — he’s not exactly Kawhi Leonard or Danny Green.

The Trail Blazers were, for awhile, the No. 2 seed in the West — a legitimate threat to the celestial body in Golden State. Coach Terry Stotts had arguably the best starting lineup in basketball, a unit that finished second in total minutes in 2013-’14, and was fourth in total minutes this season despite injuries to Aldridge and Robin Lopez and the eventual loss of Matthews. They evolved from an offensive force with just enough defense to squeak by into a two-way wrecking ball, a team so in sync that individual defensive prowess was irrelevant. How can you score on a team that speaks without saying a word?

Losing Matthews exposed Portland on both ends, and injuries across the board have made it next to impossible for Stotts to assemble a rotation that can right the ship. Portland is 10-13 since Matthews went down.

Matthews was quite possibly the team’s best overall defender. Losing him puts immense pressure on Batum to cover for Damian Lillard’s defensive shortcomings, only it’s not the same. Matthews can guard the Mike Conleys of the world, enabling Lillard to hide on Courtney Lee or Tony Allen. However, Batum isn’t that type of defender — you’re not asking him to check the gauntlet of elite point guards the West has to offer. Batum is lengthy and, at peak ability, he can imitate the better perimeter defenders of the league — blocking shots in transition and forcing shooters off open spot-ups. He lacks the agility and side-to-side pressure, however, to stay with the quickest guards in the league.

This isn’t something Portland should take lightly, by the way. Lillard shouldn’t be getting a free pass for being completely inadequate on the defensive end. Oh, and by the way, Lillard isn’t exactly making up for it on the offensive end these days, either. He made my list of Game 2 regression candidates for a reason: His 14-point dud in Game 1 was emblematic of the high-volume brick-laying he’s been giving Portland since the All-Star break.

The combination of a lukewarm Lillard and a cratering season from Batum have made the post-Matthews Blazers altogether uninspiring. That a loophole gave the Blazers the No. 4 seed and helped them evade the red-hot Clippers is a joke — and not a funny one for Los Angeles, who is going to have the series of its life against San Antonio the next two weeks. Memphis is a tricky matchup for Portland in many ways, but the Blazers are lucky they weren’t a stack of raw meat lowered into Chris Paul’s cage.

It’s hard not to overreact to Game 1. If Lillard can bring his shooting touch around, perhaps he and Aldridge can wiggle the Blazers out from the Grit-N-Grind chokehold they are in. Yet, that still doesn’t address their dilemma defensively. For all of the firepower a Lillard and C.J. McCollum backcourt provides, there is a reason why Portland had a 103.4 defensive rating in the 421 minutes the two shared the floor.

While the defense faces obvious challenges with such small, unspectacular guards, the trouble doesn’t stop there. Consider Lopez, Aldridge and Batum — opponents scored more than 109 points per 100 possessions whenever they were on the floor since March 7. This just isn’t a good defensive team without Wes, which is why Blazers fans shouldn’t be too optimistic about the rest of this series.

Which brings us back to Batum. It is well reported that 2014-’15 has been a stinker for the veteran. In April, Batum averaged 7.9 points on 36.5-percent shooting. On Sunday, Portland was outscored by 23 points during Batum’s 38 minutes.

If Portland goes down badly to Memphis, even with all of the injuries, there will be great pressure on management to make changes. Out of Portland’s hands are the futures of Aldridge, Matthews and Lopez, all set to become unrestricted free agents. Aldridge has suggested in the past that he wants to go down as the greatest Blazer ever, but in the wake of such a disappointing season, perhaps his days with the team are truly numbered.

If Aldridge leaves town, somebody will get pinned as the fall guy. That’s how these things work. My money is on Batum. It won’t be Lillard, the franchise’s other foundational piece, despite a sour performance down the stretch this season. All of the injuries will be Stotts’s get out of jail free card, and ditto for the front office.

Batum is set to make $12 million in the final year of his contract next season — a lot of money, sure, but not so much so that another team wouldn’t take a risk on an expiring contract. It would be a shame, after seven years in Portland, if Batum’s tenure with the team came to a close under such bitter circumstances, but that’s the business.

Only here’s the dilemma when somebody gets pinned as a fall guy — from millionaire professional athletes to Lee Harvey Oswald: Try as you might, the problem doesn’t go away by pinning it all on one guy. This is what Portland will be dealing with this summer — picking up the pieces of the mess it has made.

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