• Friday’s game in Sacramento is the first contest of the Trail Blazers’ 41-game road schedule this season, with the four-game trip also including stops in Dallas, San Antonio and Oklahoma City before the team returns to Portland. So after losing their home opener for the first time in 19 seasons, the team will have to get their first win of the 2019-20 season on the road if they want to avoid starting 0-5.
“Whether we won or lost (versus Denver), we had a four-game road trip coming,” said Damian Lillard. “I think it’s going to be a good test for us early. Obviously it’s not going to make or break us, but it’s a good challenge for us. We get to take our group on the road, a situation where we all we got. Playing on other teams’ floor, probably the home opener for a few teams, it’s gonna be a good experience for us.”
• The Trail Blazers knew after their preseason loss to the Phoenix Suns that they had some work to do with regard to their three-point defense. Despite sitting many of their main rotation players, the Suns were still able to run the Blazers out of their own gym thanks almost entirely to shooting 24-of-45 from three in a 134-118 victory on October 12.
But Portland’s three-point defense was an issue once again in the home opener loss, with the Nuggets going 18-of-32 from deep on the way to a 108-100 road win.
“Teams are going to get threes, but we have to make it a little more difficult for them,” said Trail Blazers head coach Terry Stotts. “(Denver) got threes in different ways, whether it was in transition or overhelp situations or poor closeouts or probably a couple other ways. We just have to be more in tune about our help defense in a lot of cases.”
The Blazers would be well served to make those adjustments quickly considering the Kings finished the 2018-19 season fourth in three-point percentage and have Buddy Heild, who averaged almost three and a half three-pointers per game last season on 43 percent shooting.
“No matter where it is in the shot clock, teams going to be shooting (three-pointers),” said Damian Lillard. “So do a better job of running teams off the line. Especially after watching film and seeing how well Zach (Collins) and Hassan (Whiteside) defended the paint — I think Denver shot a low percentage in the paint. We should be making (opponents) do more of that. If that’s a low percentage shot because of what we have down there, we’ve got to force teams into shooting more of those shots instead of letting them get threes off. So just run them off the line is the adjustment for us to make.”
• Despite the possibility that Pau Gasol (left foot) will not suit up -- he did go through parts of shootaround Friday morning -- and the certainty that Jusuf Nurkic (left leg) won’t, both players still accompanied the Trail Blazers on their first road trip of the season. Neither player attended the two-game trip during preseason play, but now that the regular season has arrived, it was decided that both would travel with the team for reasons unassociated with play on the court.
“We haven’t even discussed when (Gasol) is going to playing,” said Terry Stotts. “This is about spending quality time with our (health and performance) department, spending time with the team. They’re a part of the team. If it were a one-game trip, maybe not, but I think it’s important to be around the team for that long of a period.”
• Finally, the team had a bit of an issue getting to Sacramento Thursday afternoon. Despite being scheduled for a 3 p.m. departure from Portland International, the team was waylaid until 7:30 p.m. due to an electrical issue on their charter flight to California’s capital.
“It was a unique experience,” said Trail Blazers head coach Terry Stotts. “I never complain about how we travel, it was a comfortable wait. We were on the plane, we had food, so it wasn’t like being stuck in an airport like a lot of stranded passengers have to be. But we made the most of it, got in a little later than we wanted.”
Initial, the flight mechanics thought they could fix the issue. When that proved unsuccessful, they tried to locate a replacement part at Portland International, but to no avail. Then they sent out for the part, though it had to be delivered from Seattle, which set off a series of groans once it was announced by the captain.
Finally, the crew gave up on the delivery and opted to use a commercial 737 which had arrived at PDX earlier in the afternoon. So the charter had to be unloaded, the players, coaches and staff then exited, waited on the tarmac for roughly a half hour before boarding the replacement aircraft. At around 7:30 p.m., the team finally departed for Sacramento, arriving at the hotel a little before 10 p.m.
“I would have much rather been in my room watching the games instead of watching them on my phone and sitting on the plane and changing planes and all that stuff,” said Damian Lillard. “But our lives our great, the way we travel is great, so every once in a while, some bumps in the road or a hiccup here or there, I don’t think we should be complaining about it. Obviously we would prefer to not be in that situation but it wasn’t bad.”