Portland Trail Blazers vs. Toronto Raptors Preview

After losing their first three games of the season, thePortland Trail Blazerswon’t have much time to recover as they slide 500 miles northwest from Philly to face theToronto Raptors. While the Blazers looked competitive in moments against thePhiladelphia 76ers, the better team eventually won, and the nearly-30-point drubbing came as a shock to few.

What has been somewhat surprising has been the less-than-encouraging play of Blazers rookie point guard Scoot Henderson, carrying averages of just 7.3 points and 3 dimes on a milk-curdling 33% shooting and a whopping 4.3 turnovers. But it hasn’t just been the stats: the 19-year-old looks sped up and jittery on the court, and Henderson has yet to find his NBA pace or how to leverage his supreme athleticism to anywhere near full advantage.

The 0-3 Blazers face a 1-2 Raptors team trying to find itself amidst an offseason coaching change and a minor identity crisis, lodged firmly somewhere between “playoff team” and “lottery team, but not bad enough to get a top-4 pick.” The Raptors will look to snap their own two-game losing streak on the heels of lottery selection Gradey Dick’s 16-point breakout game on Saturday.

Portland Trail Blazers vs.Toronto Raptors- Monday, October 30 - 4:30 p.m. PDT

How to watch on TV:Root Sports, NBA League Pass

Blazers injuries:Anfernee Simons (out),Ish Wainright (out), Robert Williams III (out)

Raptors injuries:OG Anunoby (questionable), Precious Achiuwa (doubtful), Christian Koloko (out)

SBN Affiliate:Raptors HQ

The Matchup

• Dennis Schroder.Yeah, starting with your opponent’s 30-year-old role player is a weird move, but hear me out. The Raptors struggled defensively on the perimeter against the76ersand their lightning-quick guard Tyrese Maxey, and while Scoot is far (very far) from being the player Maxey is, Portland can hope that those issues remain unresolved. While Schroder and his backup Gary Trent Jr. aren’t defensive pushovers, Scoot has the opportunity to make his first meaningful mark as an NBA player with some nerves calmed and a few NBA reps under his belt. The only problem is...
• Toronto’s Wings.They’re long, they’re strong, and they’re... uh... good at defense. It doesn’t rhyme, but it doesn’t have to: Portland will be facing Pascal Siakam and Scottie Barnes, even if OG Anunoby tilts toward the pessimistic end of his “questionable” game-day status. Without the services of young vet Anfernee Simons, the Blazers will have to figure out how to bend the geometry of the court and find opportunities to score. Perhaps one such way to find those opportunities would be to look to...
• DeAndre Ayton.Coming to Portland ready be to DominAyton, we have instead seen the Blazers’ new center Stag-a-natin’ his way to just eight points on fewer than seven shots a game. Do you ALWAYS want DeAndre Ayton to be the focal point of your offense? No. But when your best player is injured, you wouldn’t mind your physically gifted and offensively talented center to fill the gaps. In a perfect world, Toronto’s Jakob Poeltl would have no chance of keeping up with Ayton, but alas, a perfect world it is not.

What Others Are Saying

The aforementioned Gradey Dick had his first big game as an NBA pro, andSamson Folk of Raptors Republicargues it’s something that Toronto can structurally leverage:

This isn’t just a guy have the ball hit his hands having shots created for him; this was the type of shooting that allows the Raptors to build up more sets around him. This is the type of shooting that will help elevate everyone else around him.

Brendan Malone, the late former NBA coach and father ofDenver Nuggetscoach Michael Malone, was instrumental in building a winning culture in Toronto from the creation of the franchise, arguesAlex Wong for the Toronto Star. Apparently, some of that culture-building included grueling practices that taxed former Blazers guard Damon Stoudamire:

在第一天,团队开始一天两顿的做法schedule which would become the norm during camp. “It was so tiring,” [Damon] Stoudamire recalls. “We practiced for like three hours twice a day for two weeks straight. It was a different grind, man. My body was struggling to recover. I never did anything after practice. I just went straight to my room to get my body right.”

The Athletic’s Eric Koreen[subscription required] wrote this summer about Raptors new head coach Darko Rajaković and his unorthodox approach of mixing naps with drinking coffee:

As Rajaković had turned Presti on to ćevapi a decade earlier, now he introduced Donovan to the “coffee nap” — having a quick cup of coffee, taking a 20-minute nap and letting the caffeine wake you up, an extremely useful tool for coaches who have video to break down, game plans to prepare and sometimes no days between games.