The Portland Trail Blazers suffered their first loss of the season to Memphis and in doing so learned what happens when things don’t go well as a team.

With shots not falling, no Robert Williams and no flow to the offense, the high-powered offense from the first three games of the season disappeared.

It’s only one game though, and now the Blazers will have some tape on what not to do moving forward.

Sticking to the right play

As frustrated as the offense was against Memphis, no one on the team is freaking out after the first loss of the season.

Head coach Micah Nori said he doesn’t foresee bad shooting nights from deep and at the line happening often, and the good part now is the team has tape on what they can try to fix if it does happen again.

“I’d say today wasn’t really a loss, it was more of a learning experience for us,” Deni Avdija told reporters. “I think today we had a test of what happens when things aren’t clicking as much. … That’s all you can do is just look at this game, watch film, understand that everybody on the team, including myself, can be better.”

Last year in these moments, Avdija put it on his shoulders to carry the offense when things became stale, and this game was the first test of what happens when Ja Morant and Damian Lillard are in the mix.

Avdija missed all four of his threes, but still scored 24 points with nine rebounds and seven assists.

Naturally one might wonder if Avdija needs to take over and be the guy on these kinds of nights, but the forward sees it more as always making sure to make the right play.

“Sometimes it’s kind of your nature to take more responsibility and be more aggressive, but you know what? I trust my teammates,” Avdija told reporters. “I’m gonna keep kicking it out, let Dame shoot his shots, let Ja attack the rim, Jrue, I can go on and on. When we need a bucket or when coach or the players put trust in me and I have the ball, sure, I’ll be aggressive.

“But if the right play is to kick it out for Dame for a three – He didn’t have the greatest shooting night tonight – I believe in him that he’s going to make the next one. This is my mentality and this is how I’m going to keep playing.”

Turnovers into points

Portland didn’t have its most turnovers of the season with 16, but it did allow the most points off of them this season with the Grizzlies cashing in for 23 off the mistakes.

In other terms, the turnovers were simply uglier and mattered more in this game as the most this season was 17 in the season-opening blowout of Phoenix.

As the Blazers shot 24.5 percent from 3-point range and 65.4 percent from the free throw line, the offense became stagnant and relied too much on one-on-one.

“We weren’t making shots and then I felt like we didn’t trust it as much anymore, we tried to force some things and play a little bit of one-on-one, which we haven’t done this year,” Nori told reporters. “We knew this would happen like that as far as facing some adversity. Just felt like guys were trying to do a little bit too much on their own.”

Out worked on the glass

Not only did the turnovers hurt, but the Blazers were outrebounded for the first time this season, losing that battle 54-45.

Of course, no Robert Williams is a big factor in that battle, but Nori thinks that’s no excuse and wants to see more help from the guards.

“The disconcerting part was the fact that we let the fact that we weren’t making shots get into lapses on the rebounding and not boxing out,” Nori told reporters. “Donovan is down there – they’ve got some bigs, that’s what they do they crash – and he’s down there working. We have to get some smalls more involved.”