The Trailblazers decided to employ a tried-and-true strategy against the Kings: use as few bench players as possible. It makes perfect sense; since you’re starting your best players and they make the best lineup, why would you ever take that lineup out of the game? They didn’t go all the way with it, foolishly playing Zach Collins 13 minutes, but otherwise, it was all starters, all the way. The last team to do this, that I can recall, was the Heat back in 2015 in the final game of the regular season. Udonis Haslem was the lone bench player that game, and Zoran Dragic (not a typo) had 22 points. Speaking of which, I need to reupload that video at some point. That was NBA history right there.
Anyhoo, Portland has now shown that a lineup of Gary Trent, Anfernee Simons, Jake Layman, Skal Labissiere, and Meyers Leonard can win a basketball game against a team that is still trying and not just tanking. Not only can they win, but they can come back from a huge deficit to do so. They were down by almost 30 at one point, but easily won. I think this was the reason that Dave Joerger got fired. There can’t be any other one, because I thought everyone agreed that the Kings had a way better than expected season?
In that sense, Joerger can put a lot of blame on Trent for not having a job right now. Trent wasn’t supposed to score this many points. He wasn’t part of the gameplan. He got the start, and played all 48 (Tom Thibodeau was taking notes while sitting at home in his tighty-whities), and managed 19 points on only 18 shots. More points than shots, especially for a rookie who hasn’t gotten to play much this year, is fine by me.