Portland's first loss is noise; Deni Avdija's role is the signal

Was the story of Thursday night really Ja Morant's reunion with Memphis? The script wrote itself, and the Grizzlies tore it up. Our view: the most useful thing to come out of Portland's first loss is how much of this team still runs through Deni Avdija.

What happened at the Moda Center

Memphis won 124-103 and moved to 5-0, according to AOL. The game was tied at halftime before the Grizzlies pulled away in the second half. Morant left with a left hamstring injury and finished with 14 points on a night he struggled to shoot. The severity of the injury is unclear. Rookie Cameron Boozer had his first triple-double, with 18 points, 12 rebounds and 12 assists.

Avdija led Portland with 24 points, nine rebounds and seven assists, per NBC Sports. He shot 8-of-16 from the field and 8-of-12 at the line.

The Morant narrative was always a little too tidy

Pregame coverage leaned hard on revenge. CBS Sports said it expected Morant to "put up big numbers against his old team." Even a song choice for warm-ups got its own write-up. That is understandable, but it is also the lazy frame. Morant was fitting in as a team player, and that was the point of his arrival, not a flaw to fix with a revenge game.

What stands out to us is the contrast. A star with a complicated Memphis history gets the spotlight, while the player who actually anchors the rotation gets a box-score line. Revenge games make for good headlines and poor basketball analysis, because they ask one player to carry a story the whole roster has to write. We think the hamstring is the real Morant story now, and the one Portland should worry about.

Avdija is the constant in a roster full of variables

Before the game, Avdija was averaging 22.3 points, 7.0 rebounds and 6.3 assists, according to CBS Sports, which called him arguably the best all-around player on the team. SLC Dunk noted he leads Portland in minutes, points and steals. Those are the numbers of a player who defines the team's floor, not its ceiling.

That matters because the rest of the picture keeps shifting. Morant is hurt. Robert Williams III sat with knee management, and Shaedon Sharpe was also listed out. Lillard is excellent but, at 36, is not someone you build a minutes plan around. Avdija is the one piece whose game travels: he gets to the line, he rebounds, he passes. On a night when the offense stalled, he still produced a 24-9-7 line.

That is the thing worth watching. Avdija is no longer the supporting act to a flashier backcourt. In our view he is the connective tissue, and a lineup built around two big-name guards still needs someone to hold it together when one of them is out.

Don't read too much into 3-0, or into 3-1

Portland entered as a 7.5-point home favorite and led the league in scoring at 129.3 points per game. One bad night does not erase that. But the loss does tell us something about how fragile the formula is. Memphis, by CBS's own reading, had been playing over its head against weak opponents, and it still beat Portland comfortably.

Our verdict: don't panic about the record, and don't anoint a contender on the basis of three wins. Watch two things instead. First, Morant's hamstring. Second, whether coach Micah Nori leans harder on Avdija when the depth chart thins. If Portland keeps winning with its stars rotating in and out, the credit will belong to the forward who anchors the rotation. If it stumbles, Avdija's 24 points on Thursday will be the best argument that it was not his fault.