POWER RANKINGS » TRENDING UP AFTER SNAPPING LOSING STREAK IN WEEK 10 →

The Trail Blazers have willed their way to two timely wins in a row to stop a seven-game losing streak, their longest since 2015. Portland did just enough this week to stay within play-in contention but will need to build momentum and keep streaking to grind back into better positioning in the Western Conference playoff picture.

It took big minutes and characteristically big games from Damian Lillard, who after a slow start to the season, appears to be back in superstar form. Dame has scored 75 points in as many minutes over the last two wins including a season-high 43 points against Charlotte. It was Lillard’s 40th career game with 40-plus points, making him one of 25 players in league history to score at least 40 points 40 or more times. 

The Trail Blazers turned the ball over a league-worst 19 times per game over this week’s three-game stretch, but were counterintuitively 2-1 over that same span, including just the second road win of the season over a Grizzlies team that had won nine of their last 10 games, and a home win against the Hornets in which the Blazers scored 81 points in the first half. The Blazers were top five in threes made and free-throws made over that same span and were able to shoot their way to victory the last two games fuelled by big shooting nights from the likes of Damian Lillard, Norman Powell, and Ben McLemore.

Norman Powell has scored 20+ points in five of the last seven games starting at shooting guard in the seven-game injury absence of CJ McCollum. He scored 28 points including 5-8 from 3-PT in Sunday’s 105-100 win over Memphis. Ben McLemore contributed 28 points in 27 minutes off the bench in Friday’s 125-116 win over Charlotte. His six threes in the second quarter were one shy of the franchise record for threes in a quarter (McCollum, seven). With still no word on CJ McCollum’s return from injury, the production from the other guards has been a welcome sight in Portland. 

Coming in as low as No. 23 and as high as No. 21 in this week’s power rankings, Portland is trending in the right direction but still sits in the bottom third of the league. After last week’s season-low marks in the power rankings, Portland will likely need to go on a big run of the winning variety to even get back to the rankings with which they started the season.

Here’s where the Trail Blazers sit in the tenth edition of the weekly power rankings after rounding out the week with two timely victories:

Damian Lillard has been back for the last five games, and it might be that he’s been back for the last two. Lillard totaled 75 points in 75 minutes in weekend wins over the Hornets and Grizzlies, shooting 9-for-20 from 3-point range and 24-for-26 from the free throw line. It was just the fourth and fifth times (in 25 games) this season that he’s scored at least 30 points, having done so in 35 (52%) of his 67 games last season.

CJ McCollum remains on the shelf, but Norman Powell (28 points with two big shots down the stretch in Memphis) has picked up some of the scoring slack and the Blazers have ranked 13th defensively over the two weeks that McCollum has been out. And that’s with five of the seven games having come against teams that rank in the top six on offense. The Blazers obviously want McCollum back soon, but his absence is a clear opportunity to see how important it is to have more size on the floor. The lineup they’ve started the last five games (Nassir Little and Larry Nance Jr. at the forwards) hasn’t been particularly good defensively (114.3 points allowed per 100 possessions) in its 53 minutes, but they’ve allowed just 105.8 per 100 in 396 total minutes with Little and Nance on the floor together.

The victory in Memphis on Sunday was the Blazers’ second road win of the season. They’ll go for No. 3 in New Orleans on Tuesday before getting back to their home-heavy stretch of schedule.

Schuhmann has the Trail Blazers behind the Pacers at No. 21 and ahead of the Knicks at No. 23.

The Blazers might've come up with their two biggest wins of the season this week. Certainly, they are the two most important victories considering how things were spiraling for Portland. The Blazers needed 43 points and eight assists from Damian Lillard to halt a seven-game losing streak and beat the Hornets on Friday. Then the Blazers followed that up by beating the Grizzlies in Memphis on Sunday. It was just their third win since Nov. 24, a disastrous stretch that saw the Blazers lose 10 of 13 games. CJ McCollum missed his seventh straight game Sunday, and he remains out with a lung injury.

The folks at ESPN have the Trail Blazers behind the Raptors at No. 20 and ahead of the Knicks at No. 22.

 

It’s funny to think about how many of the Portland Trail Blazers’ problems get solved by Damian Lillard getting back to being Damian Lillard on the court. For whatever reason (injury, new ball, insane situation with the franchise, random slumps), Lillard has struggled to start this season. Now that he’s apparently back to normal with his body, we’ve seen a glimpse into the regular Dame we’re used to the last two games. It’s not a surprise either that the Blazers have won both of those games. Dame went for 43 in a win over the Hornets, making 12 of 19 from the field and 6 of 11 from deep. Then Sunday against Memphis, he had 32 points on 9-of-19 from the field. He went to the line 26 times total in both games. If Lillard starts playing along these lines as regression hits the mean in the face, the Blazers will stabilize. They need more than that to thrive, but at least they’ll stabilize.

Harper has the Trail Blazers behind the Hornets at No. 20 and ahead of the Pacers at No. 22.

 

The Blazers picked up a much-needed win against the Hornets on Friday night and another Sunday by knocking off the surging Grizzlies. Before that, however, Portland had lost seven straight games, and its on-court struggles coincided with front-office turmoil. The Blazers’ offense has been league-average this season, and with a defense in the bottom of the NBA, it’s made for a tough combination.

Pickman has the Trail Blazers behind the Pacers at No. 22 and ahead of the Spurs at No. 24.