The Trail Blazers are Built to Win the Emirates NBA Cup™️

📍 PORTLAND, Ore. — Nothing like a game with some stakes to save the Trail Blazers’ season.

There were plenty of stakes built in already to Tuesday night’s win over the Minnesota Timberwolves. The Blazers were coming off a lifeless 45-point loss to Memphis over the weekend that had many (including me) wondering if Chauncey Billups would survive the week. That’s reason enough for the team to respond, if they were going to.

But Tuesday came with even more stakes: it was the first of four group-stage games in the NBA’s second-annual in-season tournament, which I think you’re now legally obligated to call by its official name, the Emirates NBA Cup™️. What a perfect opportunity for the Blazers not just to rebound from one of their worst losses of a two-year period full of them, but to actually play for something more tangible than development and lottery balls.

If this is what they’re going to look like on a big stage with real stakes—a trip to Las Vegas for the championship game and a $500,000 cash prize per player—maybe the rebuild is in a better place than previously thought.

“I’m telling you, it’s a great thing,” Billups said. “When you play against a team that good, there’s going to be a heightened feel anyway. But this is different. The court is different, it feels different. Everything about it feels like it means more, because it does.”

The Blazers team that showed up on Tuesday was unrecognizable from the one that didn’t show up on Sunday. They hit as many three-pointers (18) as they hit in their last three games combined, which includes a 25-point loss last Friday to these same Timberwolves. Eight players scored in double figures. After the Grizzlies loss, Billups said that “everybody sucked.” After this one, he said “everyone played great.” Just about every rotation player—but especially Deni Avdija and Robert Williams III—had their best game of the season.

Beyond the stats, the game felt different in the building. Beyond the special tournament court (which, by the way, the Blazers knocked out of the park this year, with an all-black rose pattern that’s a massive upgrade over the distractingly bright red they used last year), this was the most amped-up the Moda Center crowd has been all year, and they fed off it. There were multiple end-of-quarter buzzer-beaters. For at least one night, the vibes were restored.

The tournament format, which includes a tiebreaker for point differential, changes the coaching strategy, too. In the closing minutes Tuesday, with the result all but decided, Timberwolves coach Chris Finch successfully challenged a late foul call that would have given Jerami Grant three free throws to add to the Blazers’ lead. Billups retaliated a few plays later by challenging an out-of-bounds call that should have been called as a foul as Julius Randle shoved Grant out of bounds. He won that challenge, too, and two free throws added two points to the Blazers’ final margin of victory.

Only in the Emirates NBA Cup™️ would you see that kind of chess match in garbage time.

It’s been said that most players in the NBA are either 82-game players or 16-game players. DeMar DeRozan is an 82-game player—consistent and reliable over the marathon that is a regular season, but not someone with a reputation for raising up a level in the playoffs. Jimmy Butler is a 16-game player—not always healthy or productive over six months and 82 games, but there are few players you’d rather have on your team in a playoff series.

Here’s a thought: What if the addition of the Emirates NBA Cup™️ has created a third archetype, the 7-game player? What if Scoot Henderson is an NBA Cup riser?

Here’s another thought: In all likelihood, the Blazers are going to end the season with a win total somewhere in the neighborhood of the 21 games they won last season, give or take. Wouldn’t it be great if six of those 21 wins were the four group-stage games and the two knockout-stage games needed to reach the championship game in Las Vegas?

This is a fanbase that still celebrates its most recent Summer League championship in 2022 and remembers that Luka Garza (who was a DNP-CD for the Timberwolves on Tuesday) was a part of it. You think they wouldn’t love to hang a banner for the Emirates NBA Cup™️? You think our friends at TRILLBLAZIN wouldn’t come up with a commemorative shirt design that would sell out right away?

Teams like the Blazers, who have no shot at making the play-in, let alone the playoffs, are exactly who this tournament was designed for. It doesn’t matter what their record at the end of the season will be, it matters if they can win these four specific games to make it to the knockout stage.

They’re a quarter of the way there, and the Timberwolves are the best team in their five-team group. They’ve already beaten the Clippers once this season. The Kings are a solid play-in-caliber team but far from unbeatable. Houston is a tough out, but they’re also not a juggernaut. It’s not out of the realm of possibility to think they could win those three games in the next four weeks.

A few of the Blazers’ veterans have played in games with real stakes before. Williams and Deandre Ayton have made the Finals, Grant played in the Western Conference Finals in Denver and Anfernee Simons was a rookie on the Blazers’ own Western Conference Finals run but didn’t play much. Donovan Clingan won two national championships at UConn but is only 12 games into his NBA career.

But the highest-leverage moment of most of these guys’ careers was this past January, when Damian Lillard returned to Portland for the first time as a visiting player with the Bucks. That was the Blazers’ only nationally televised game of last season. It was by far the loudest crowd Moda Center saw in an otherwise miserable year. It was a big moment, with the franchise honoring its all-time leading scorer. And the Blazers showed up for it, pulling out a win.

Beyond that game, most of this Blazers roster only knows losing and playing in games that don’t matter beyond how they affect the team’s chances to draft someone who might take their job one day. If they’re going to be good again someday, these guys need experience playing in games that mean something, even if that “something” was manufactured by the NBA for the purpose of selling another TV rights package to Amazon.

The Blazers aren’t built to win a championship this year or anytime soon. But they may be built to win the Emirates NBA Cup™️.