Turkoglu's prayer sinks Blazers

Przybilla: 'Our toughest loss, by far'

By Kerry Eggers

The Portland Tribune, Dec 9, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Hedo Turkoglu sinks the winning shot over Travis Outlaw.

SAM FORENCICH / GETTY IMAGES

If the Trail Blazers and their legion of fans were crestfallen at the way the Orlando Magic pulled off a 109-108 victory Tuesday night at the Rose Garden, the other side was positively giddy.

“Brilliant coaching down the stretch,” Orlando coach Stan Van Gundy joked after Hedo Turkoglu’s 25-foot bank 3-pointer from the top of the key with .3 of a second left gave the game its improbable finish.

“That is exactly the play we drew up. We told him, ‘Shoot it off the glass if you can get an angle on it.’ I have to give myself all the credit for that one.”

It was the first loss in eight home games for Portland (15-8), which led 108-100 after LaMarcus Aldridge’s 18-foot jumper with 2:21 remaining.

They were the last points the Blazers were to score.

Jameer Nelson buried a 3-pointer to cut the margin to 108-103 with 1:57 left. Neither team scored again until Rashard Lewis’ trey with 29 seconds to go made it 108-106.

On Portland’s final possession, the Magic sent two defenders at Brandon Roy, who wound up forcing a three that drew nothing but air as the shot clock expired. Aldridge converted the rebound, but it was too late.

After an Orlando timeout, the ball was inbounded to Turkoglu, who — guarded tightly by Travis Outlaw — took a couple dribbles to the right and launched a prayer that was answered.

With .3 of a second or less remaining, a team can score only on a tip-in. The Blazers, out of timeouts, didn’t even try. They inbounded to Roy, who threw up a home-run ball from the backcourt that wouldn’t have counted had it gone in.

The Magic players stormed the court, surrounded Turkoglu and celebrated.

The Blazers wound up slinking to their locker room in silence as the sellout crowd of 20,642 watched — a few of them booing, most in stunned disbelief.

“We were making our first look for Rashard, our second look for Jameer,” Van Gundy said. “We couldn’t get either one. The last option on the play is to go into Dwight (Howard) and back out to Hedo. Then it’s whatever Hedo can create out of it, and he threw one in.

“There’s no question we got lucky at the end. You have to roll your eyes, because we threw one in. But we had to do some very good things and show some very good resolve to come back from eight points down with two minutes to go to give ourselves a chance. That’s what I’m proud of.”

On the other side of the Rose Garden, Portland coach Nate McMillan was lamenting how the Blazers could let a game seemingly in the bag slip away.

“We didn’t execute,” McMillan said. “We had that game under control. If we execute, we win that game.”

Roy had a monster game with a season-high 30 points, nine rebounds, five assists and two blocked shots. Portland’s all-star guard scored nine of his points in the fourth quarter, but none after he sank an 18-foot jumper with 2:58 to give the Blazers a 106-100 lead.

At that point, Van Gundy called timeout and told his players to double-team Roy with every touch of the ball.

“I’m sometimes not a very bright guy,” Van Gundy said. “It took him to get to 30 (points) before I said, ‘You know what? We really can’t contain him on the pick-and-roll.’ We had tried every scheme we had in the book, so we said, ‘The hell with it, we’re going to trap him and make somebody else make a play.’

“That’s all we were going to do the last three or four possessions. The question is, why weren’t we doing it four minutes before that?”

McMillan said he tried to make the necessary adjustment.

“We’ve seen teams start to double-team Brandon and get the ball out of his hands (at the end of games),” the Portland coach said. On the Blazers’ final possession, “We had a play set to get a guy to the middle and attack that, but he didn’t get there. We didn’t get a shot off.”

Portland’s Joel Przybilla — who came off the bench to outplay Howard — called it the Blazers’ “toughest loss of the season, by far.”

“We controlled everything for 46 minutes,” said Przybilla, who contributed 11 points, 11 rebounds and two blocks in 25 minutes. “For — I don’t know, whatever his name — to hit a 3-point bank shot ... after a good road trip, it’s a tough way to lose it.”

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