The short-handed Portland Trail Blazers were able to gut out the victory over the Utah Jazz as they won 102-94 on Friday night. The Blazers improve to 37-18 on the season, 20-7 at home and the Jazz now sport a 19-35 record and have just a 7-20 record on the road. The Portland Trail Blazers have officially won the season series against the Jazz as they have a commanding 3-0 lead this season with one game left to play in Utah.
This was the definition of an ugly, ugly win. These games without LaMarcus Aldridge, Meyers Leonard and Joel Freeland are showing that this offense sputters and sometimes falls flat without LA. Portland somehow able to score 102 points and the main culprits were Wesley Matthews, Damian Lillard and, the savior of tonight’s game, Robin Lopez.
After coming off a disappointing and heart-breaking loss to the Spurs and losing three in a row for the first time this season, the Blazers had to win this game. If you drop this one, you start asking some deeper and tougher questions. Does this team still have confidence? Are they starting to become selfish? Are they really just a three-point shooting team? However, those questions can be thrown away after tonight. You can talk all you want about how the Blazers should have played better or how the defensive intensity should have shown up early. I tend to agree, but this next week is survival week. The Blazers might drop some games, but, in my opinion, every win without LA is impressive regardless where and who you are playing. The important part is getting LA back as soon as possible. Portland just has to hold down the fort for a little longer.
The game started off slow. The Blazers outscored the Jazz 16-15 and looked out of sorts. It was expected, but after the San Antonio game the fans probably didn’t enjoy watching that. Pretty quickly it was obvious that the Jazz were taking a page out of San Antonio’s defensive strategies from Wednesday. Utah ran the Blazers off the three-point line and clogged the paint. However, this left the elbow and mid-range sections wide, wide open. This was apparent as Damian Lillard probably had more floaters than I have ever seen him take in a game this season.
Portland outscored the Jazz by three in the second quarter and looked to be on their way to victory. That was until the Jazz outscored the Blazers by 13 and took a nine-point lead into the fourth quarter. What? The Blazers only made seven field goals all quarter while the Jazz missed just three. The attack of the cold spell, part two. The game, at that point, felt all too similar to the San Antonio game. The defense was lacking once Lopez came out of the game early in the third after getting called for his fourth foul. The Blazers were just taking bad shots and trying to challenge too much instead of the moving the ball.
Enter the fourth quarter. Almost immediately the atmosphere changed. The Blazers went on a quick 7-0 run to cut the Jazz lead to two. Nicolas Batum, who exited the game for a stretch, finally returned and was really just a defensive presence. He hit his only field goal of the game, but it was a major three that brought the Blazers back from the dead. The first possession of the quarter ended in a Utah offensive foul as you saw the Blazers start getting into the space of the Utah players. Mo Williams started hounding his man while Lopez was just being a beast inside. The Blazers outscored the Jazz 38-21 in what was a complete shift from the third quarter. Head coach Terry Stotts obviously got through to his players.
Terry Stotts used 11 of his 12 active players. This will continue as you will have to find every little bit of help you can get. The bench combined for 30 points on the night. Will Barton contributed 8 points and a pretty impressive 360 dunk on a fast break. Mo Williams was cold as he scored 13 points on just 4-for-11 shooting; however, he hit a big bucket in the fourth quarter to make it a two-possession game with 1:02 remaining. Mo can be infuriating, but when he makes a critical bucket or hits crucial free-throws, people forget about it almost instantly.
The Blazers went just 7-for-20 from beyond the arc as that continues to be defended well by other teams. However, the Blazers were able to score 52 points in the paint. Another staggering stat was that the first 22 points that the Blazers scored were in the paint. Never thought you would hear that from this Blazer squad. What was most impressive was the FTs. Portland converted on all 17 of their attempts.
The absolute hero of this game was Robin Lopez. He finished the night with 12 points on 5-for-8, but had a career-high 18 rebounds and 4 blocks. He also recorded a +20 on the night. Without Lopez in this game, the Blazers would have lost simple as that. The few minutes where he had to sit out was dangerous. When he had to sit out the third quarter, the Jazz went up by 9. That tells you how much of an effect he was having on the game. To add to that, he played with four fouls for most of the fourth quarter. The fact that he was able to play aggressive defense while still not being whistled was impressive. Lopez gave the Blazers so many second chance opportunities and affected so many drives that he was the obvious hero. He even had a moment at the end where he dunked the ball with about eight seconds remaining when the game was decided. With Lopez being the only true big man on this squad right now, he has to carry a lot of the load. Tonight, he did that and more.
Along with Lopez, the backcourt of Damian Lillard and Wesley Matthews kept the Blazers afloat. They combined for 52 points on 20-for-45 shooting. Lillard has the massive green light and Matthews found his shot.
Take a deep breath Blazer fans and get ready for another ugly one. The Blazers will take on the Minnesota Timberwolves (again?) for the final time this season on Sunday night at the Moda Center at 6:00 p.m. PST. You may ask how the Blazers will deal with Kevin Love? Well, I do not know, this should be an interesting question that Stotts will have to answer. Regardless, it will be ugly. All fans can do is just hope that LA comes back sooner rather than later. Heck, I think they would even take Meyers at this point. Stay tuned!