The Portland Trail Blazers (19-22) couldn’t hit the big shot down the stretch once more and fell to visiting Cleveland 119-113. The loss keeps Portland in 11th in the Western Conference, .5 game behind Utah and Minnesota in 9th and 10th and only two games back of the Los Angeles Clippers for the six seed.
After going 6 for 35 from deep two days ago against Orlando, Damian Lillard came out and hit his first shot of the night from beyond the arc. In fact, Portland started 4 for 5 and kept the lead despite the Cavaliers getting multiple alley-oops to Jarrett Allen on the other end.
Lillard wasn’t alone either as Jerami Grant and Anfernee Simons hit some early shots as well. The turnovers were still there in the first quarter with seven of them, but it only led to four points for Cleveland.
Lillard stayed hot in the second quarter, scoring 14 points mostly off drives to the bucket despite rolling his ankle once more early in the game.
Those early lobs to Allen were a concern, but for the most part the defense seen from Portland the last four games showed up as well. At halftime, the Blazers had four blocks and four steals and led 58-51 while holding Cleveland star guard Donovan Mitchell to only eight points.
Mitchell hit a couple 3-pointers at the end of the third quarter that helped close the gap in a relatively quiet frame. Grant scored 12 in the quarter while Lillard had 10 more to bring his total to 35 on the night.
More importantly the Blazers only committed three turnovers and held on to the ball well to maintain that lead they held all game.
However, the offense, again, went cold in the fourth. Portland went 2 for 11 from deep and 7 for 19 from the field. Meanwhile Mitchell took over with a couple tough buckets in crunch time after Cleveland took its first lead of the night at 105-104.
It wasn’t without good looks down the stretch either as Grant had some open looks from deep while Lillard was able to cut through to the bucket. It wasn’t enough though to keep pace with the Cavs as Evan Mobley and Darius Garland had nine and eight points respectively in the fourth as well.
Lillard was still able to reach 50 points on the night on 16 for 28 shooting, 5 for 13 from deep. Grant had 22 points while Nurkic had 12 and 12 rebounds. Mitchell had 26 to lead the cavs while Allen had 24 and 10 behind him.
Portland played well enough to win, and Chauncey Billups and Lillard both said that after the game. But now the losing streak has run to five and the amount of concerns continue to stack up.
The Blazers hope 7 p.m. Saturday against visiting Dallas can start to dispel some of the issues plaguing the team currently.
What they said
“I thought we played our asses off, I really do. We played really good, we played hard, and as I was explaining to our guys yesterday: We didn’t get into that slump that we were in in one game. And we’re not just going to get out of it. I think we’re getting really close, we played really hard. We had a lot of things go wrong at the end of the game for us to lose this game. I’m proud of our effort, we continue to scrap no matter what’s going on, so I love that,” Billups said.
“We played so well. We had good energy, we competed. We had control of the game. We played well in the first half, we didn’t have a slow start in the third and played well. Back and forth game … It was a game we deserved to win, we just came up short,” Lillard said.
“It’s no different than earlier in the season when we kept coming up on the right side of it at the end, it was like we played like we expected to come up big at the end. I think right now, because we’re coming up short at the end of games, it’s almost like we’re putting extra pressure on ourselves with everything that we do … We want to do the right thing and come out on the winning side of things when that time comes, so I think we’re just putting pressure on ourselves and just pressing in those moments and it’s going the opposite way,” Lillard on the team down the stretch.
Standout stats
Bench drought: Thursday night, and really throughout the losing streak, the scoring from the Blazers bench was quiet. The Portland reserves only had four points at halftime, a bucket made by each rookie in Jabari Walker and Shaedon Sharpe. The bench finished with nine points overall.
Big three: Portland’s “big three” in Lillard, Grant and Simons heard the message from Tuesday loud and clear about the starters needing to play better. The trio combined for 45 of the Blazers’ 58 points at halftime. Lillard of course went on to have 50, but the trio remained as the only ones hitting consistent big shots throughout the game.
Cold quarter: Portland only scored 22 points in the fourth while giving up 32 to fall late in the game. It shot less than 40% from the field while the Cavs were above 60%. Another night of the Blazers coming up short in the clutch department.
Game grade: B
Billups and Lillard are right, they played well enough to win the game. Lillard dropped his 15th career game of 50 points or more, which is the second most since he joined the NBA in 2012 behind James Harden’s 23 games. It was once again a night where the Blazers couldn’t hit the big shots down the stretch. It could be pressure, it could be talent, but either way, at the halfway point of the season the Blazers need to make sure that the first three quarters are what becomes a consistency and the fourth quarter slump gets corrected with plenty of home cooking for the next three months.