The Portland Trail Blazers are fielding a brand new team this season, full of young players, lacking NBA experience, let alone experience with each other. The chemical reaction varies from night to night, at times explosive, at times just pffffftttt.
This variance offers challenges completely different than the team and its viewers experienced in the relative placidity of the now-passed Damian Lillard era. The game itself isn’t any harder to watch. It may be more entertaining, in fact! But it’s harder to know what you’re seeing, let alone what to pay attention to.
Last week we published a Blazer’s Edge Mailbag submission asking how, I, personally, watch and evaluate games.