After the first two weeks of the 2011-12 NBA regular season, the Portland Trail Blazers are one of the league’s biggest surprises. Written off by many in the aftermath of losing Brandon Roy and Greg Oden, Portland is 5-2 with a +3.7 point differential, including home victories over the Nuggets and Lakers and a road win at Oklahoma City.

However, because LaMarcus Aldridge is their only All-Star caliber player, they aren’t seen as being near the level of title contenders like Oklahoma City, Miami and Chicago. Just last year, the New Orleans Hornets started 9-1 before regressing to their actual talent level and finishing with a 46-36 record and a first-round loss.

But like the 10-11 Dallas Mavericks, what the Trail Blazers lack in star power they make up for in size, skill and athleticism in the frontcourt, the hallmarks of a championship team. They have elite or near-elite individual defenders at every position, and they surround Aldridge with three players who can create their own shot as well as a wealth of perimeter shooting.

They’re still fairly anonymous to the casual NBA fan, as they’ve never made it out of the first round. However they only became Aldridge’s team last year, and that team, which isn’t nearly as talented as this year’s group, had the Mavericks on the brink of elimination in the first round.

They are the proverbial “team no one believed in”, as every member of their eight-man rotation, with the exception of 6’8 perimeter stopper Nicolas Batum, has been overshadowed and under appreciated throughout their careers. Most importantly, their games complement each other, making them better than the sum of their parts:

LaMarcus Aldridge

At 6’11, 240 with a 7’5 wingspan and a 34 inch max vertical, he can defend on the perimeter, hold position in the low post and alter shots in the paint. And with the ability to play out of the high and low post offensively, he is the NBA’s most complete young big man.

Playing Aldridge at power forward gives Portland one of the biggest line-ups in the NBA and playing him at the five gives them one of the smallest, yet both units are still effective. This versatility at 6’11+ is one of the reasons Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett and Rasheed Wallace were so dangerous.

He’s one of the top 15 players in the NBA: a third-team All-NBA forward who should be a lock for the 2012 US Olympic team. But because he isn’t very flashy and he plays in a small market, he’s never even made an All-Star team.

Swapping Andre Miller for Raymond Felton has made him even better, as Felton has the Trail Blazers playing more in the open court, where Aldridge can be dominant. Adding another three-point shooter has also dramatically improved their floor spacing, giving him more room to operate, as Miller’s defender could crowd the paint and leave him open on the three-point line.

Aldridge, with a career high usage rating of 26.6, is scoring 21.9 points a game on 49.2% shooting from the field. Because he is such an efficient first option, he lets the Trail Blazers get away with featuring two fairly inefficient shot creators in Felton and Jamal Crawford.

Gerald Wallace

After one season at Alabama, Wallace was a late first-round pick on a deep Sacramento Kings team in 2001, spending his first three years on the bench. When he was given an opportunity to play with the expansion Charlotte Bobcats, he slowly developed into a star, making the 2010 All-Star Game.

But the Bobcats were a poorly-run small-market team who were almost never on national TV in his six seasons there, so his emergence happened well below the national radar.

A rugged and athletic 6’7, 220 forward, Wallace is an excellent two-way player, with the size to dominate smaller opponents, the speed to score on bigger ones and the versatility to defend three different positions. The only hole in his game is a lack of an outside shot, but Aldridge and Kurt Thomas’ ability to space the floor as big men makes that less of an issue in Portland.

Marcus Camby

While the vast majority of the 1996 draft has long since retired, Camby, the No. 2 overall pick that year, is playing as well as ever in his 15th NBA season. The athletic 6’11, 235 shot-blocker has overcome the “injury-prone” label that haunted him early in his career, missing an average of only 14 games a year in his last eight seasons.

With a career average of 2.5 blocks, he was the defensive anchor of the New York Knicks team that made an improbable run to the 2000 NBA Finals as well as the 06-07 Defensive Player of the Year for the Denver Nuggets.

His length, especially with a combination of Aldridge, Wallace and Batum in front of him, makes Portland formidable defensively. On the other end of the floor, he’s an underrated passer, averaging 4.7 assists a game this year, an incredible number for a center.

Jamal Crawford

Before emerging as a Sixth Man of the Year winner for the Atlanta Hawks, Crawford spent his entire NBA career on losing teams, becoming the longest-serving NBA player without playoff experience in 2010.

He became known as a selfish me-first guard, but once he was on a team that could afford to use his shot-making ability off the bench, he proved what a valuable weapon he could be. At 6’6, his ball-handling ability and athleticism lets the Trail Blazers use a lot of different combinations on the perimeter.

He takes a lot of bad shots, as his career 41% shooting percentage attests to, but he makes a lot of them too, which is why he’s one of the most feared fourth-quarter scorers in the NBA.

Ray Felton

One of four first-round picks on UNC’s 2005 championship team, Felton has lived with the burden of being taken right behind Deron Williams and Chris Paul in the 2005 Draft for his entire career.

He suffers in comparison to his draft classmates, but he’s a quality player with career averages of 13.6 points, 6.7 assists and 2.6 turnovers. He came into his own during the Bobcats’ 2010 playoff run, even receiving All-Star consideration for his play with New York in the first half of last season.

But just as he was making a name for himself under Mike D’Antoni, he was sent to Denver in the Carmelo Anthony trade, where he had to share minutes and shots with a rising star in Ty Lawson. Now, at the age of 27, he’s finally been given the opportunity to run a good team on a national stage.

Wesley Matthews

He shared the spotlight at Marquette with two other talented senior perimeter players in Dominic James and Jerel McNeal, and wasn’t drafted despite being an athletic 6’5, 220 shooting guard averaging 18.0 points, 6.0 rebounds and 2.5 assists a game in the Big East.

Now, in his second season as an NBA starter, Matthews has established himself as one of the league’s best perimeter defenders while averaging 14.9 points and shooting 43.3% from beyond the arc. The duo of Matthews and Batum lets Portland match up defensively with multiple elite perimeter scorers without sacrificing floor spacing on the offensive end.

Kurt Thomas

As a senior at TCU, he led the nation in scoring and rebounding, averaging 29 points and 15 rebounds. Fifteen years and eight NBA teams later, he was a crucial part of the Chicago Bulls frontcourt rotation, stepping in for the injured Joakim Noah and starting 37 games last season.

At 6’9, 230, the league’s oldest player is still a rock defensively in the low post while his ability to knock down mid-range jumpers makes him a great asset as a back-up center.

Their odds

Before the season started, I thought Portland at 35:1 to win a title was an excellent long-shot bet. Less than a month later, their odds have dropped to 25:1. Expect that number to continue dropping as the season progresses.