The Portland Trail Blazers fell 124-121 to the Sacramento Kings on opening night of the 2021-22 regular season. The effort was spotty, the results equally so. If you’d like a quarter-by-quarter rundown of how the game unfolded, you can find our Instant Recap right here. Here’s the systematic analysis of Portland’s performance in Game 1.
Defense
After spending most of the 2020-21 season bemoaning the myriad ways their defense went wrong, the 2021-22 Trail Blazers exhibited only two issues in their first game: defending outside and defending inside.
Of the two, the inside defense was far more telling.