If the Trail Blazers are to have any chance of repeating as Las Vegas Summer League Tournament champions, they’ll have to help themselves and will need a significant amount of help from outside.
With a 2-1 record, the Trail Blazers currently sit in 11th place in the Las Vegas Summer League standings with one scheduled game left to play, a 6 p.m. contest versus the Orlando Magic Thursday night on ESPN at Thomas & Mack Arena. And since it will take at least a 3-1 record to be one of the four teams that qualify for the tournament semifinal, Portland must win their game on Thursday -- Orlando is currently winless in three games in Las Vegas -- to have any chance of winning a second-straight Las Vegas Summer League tournament championship.
But winning Thursday’s contest alone won’t be enough, for multiple reasons.
First, there are currently three teams -- the Cavaliers, Rockets and Jazz -- that are 3-0 with one game to go. So if any of those three teams win their final game, they’re through to the tournament semifinal -- again, only the top four teams have an opportunity to play for the championship. So if you’re pulling for a summer league repeat, you want all three of those teams to lose their fourth game.
But with regard specifically to the Blazers, with 13 teams tied at 2-1 going into their last scheduled game, there is a mathematical certainty that multiple teams will finish tied at 3-1. And since point differential is the tiebreaker in the event of a multiple team tie, not only will the Trail Blazers need to best the Magic to get to 3-1, they’ll very likely need to do so by a significant margin.
At +2.7, Portland has the eighth-best point differential among the 13 teams with a 2-1 record -- for comparison, the Nets are the 2-1 team with the best point differential at +11.7 while the Bucks have the worst at -1.7 -- so if Portland is to have a legitimate chance of making the semifinal, they’ll need to win big. If you’re looking for reasons for optimism, the Magic are tied for the worst point differential at summer league at -12.
It’s also possible that we won’t know which four teams have qualified to play for the tournament championship until after all the games are completed Friday night. If the Cavaliers and Rockets, two of the three currently undefeated teams, win their games Thursday, we’ll know that only two spots are still up for grabs come Friday. However, the Jazz, the other undefeated team, play the Suns Friday night at 7:30 p.m., so we likely won’t know for sure which teams have qualified until after that game has been decided.
So if you're rooting for the Trail Blazers to repeat, you want Portland to win big versus Orlando, the undefeated teams to lose and the 2-1 teams above the Trail Blazers in the standings to lose, or at least win by small margins.
No word yet on the availability of Scoot Henderson (shoulder) and Keon Johnson (finger) for Portland's game versus Orlando Thursday night. The Blazers have started Michael Devoe, Shaedon Sharpe, Kris Murray, Jabari Walker and Ibou Badji in their last two games, both wins, in Las Vegas.