The Portland Trail Blazers made sure not to come away from this five-game road trip empty-handed. Portland broke their four-game losing streak as they beat the New Orleans Pelicans 111-103 on Friday night. The Trail Blazers improve to 43-23 on the season, while the Pelicans fall to 26-39. Portland now leads the season series 2-1 with a final game to be played at the Moda Center in April.
After having a team hash-out after the San Antonio loss, Portland came out with a new attitude and purpose. Shootaround was taken a bit more seriously and the focus for this game was at an all-time high. Without LaMarcus Aldridge and Mo Williams, Portland is back in survival mode and is back to playing small ball with Dorell Wright starting at the power forward position. Before this game, the Blazers were 4-1 in games without LaMarcus Aldridge; however, coming into the game at New Orleans Blazer fans probably had some doubts. New Orleans has been a tough place to play in years past and Portland did lose a heartbreaker in their last game against the Pelicans on a Tyreke Evans buzzer beater. That was with LaMarcus Aldridge. How would the Blazers fair without him? Well, as it turns out, not too bad.
Portland jumped out to a nine-point lead early in the first quarter. The main culprits were Dorell Wight and Robin Lopez. Dorell had swished a three for the first play of the game and then was promptly fouled while shooting his next one. Robin Lopez made back-to-back shots and helped give the Blazers the edge. However, Anthony Davis is a beast. With three made shots by Davis and a three-pointer by Eric Gordon, the game was tied.
Throughout the whole game, neither team could really pull away. You saw the determination on the Portland side. Whenever the Pelicans would threaten, there would be a three-pointer or a player would go to the line. Portland had an answer for anything. The fourth quarter was when they really started to pull away. With 6:18 remaining in the fourth quarter, the Pelicans called a timeout while they held a five-point lead. This was the same situation as the Blazers have been in multiple times on this road trip. This was the perfect time to see if that talk really did something.
Damian Lillard quickly made a driving lay-up and reduced the deficit to three. Portland’s defense cranked up when it needed to. Five straight possessions ended in misses for New Orleans and Portland answered on the other end including a big three-pointer from Lillard. This was also another critical moment. In the last four games on this trip, the Blazers have been unable to make that momentum-changing or dagger shot. This was the first of two that the Blazers made tonight. New Orleans and Portland went back and forth between an Anthony Davis dunk or lay-up and a Robin Lopez lay-up or jump hook. The Blazers were continuing to answer. Finally, Damian Lillard swished a top of the key 27-foot three-pointer to seal the game up nicely. The Blazers have been unable to close games out on this road trip and tonight they made sure that there was no chance.
The game itself was fun to watch, but it was what the win represented that will carry them forward. The Blazers head home for a quick three-game homestand before heading out on another road trip. Coming home 0-5 would have been unacceptable and fans would have started to question whether this team really had it anymore. It was clear that Portland is realizing that they need to come out with a better focus and they did. Role players stepped up in the absence of key players and almost made it look easy. Also, this win signified the end of the losing streak that has dominated the Blazer news for what seems like quite a while. After watching this game, the offense reminded me of the early moments of this season and the threes and lay-ups that were rattling out seemed to find their mark. This was a confidence-boosting win and a good platform to make a push for the postseason.
The biggest stat of the night had to be the three-pointers. Portland, after struggling from downtown in previous games, swished 14-of-33 and shot 42% from long distance. Three-pointers erase a lot of mistakes and those mistakes were the turnovers. Portland had 16 and New Orleans was able to score 23 off of them. I imagine that if Portland wasn’t hitting from distance, then this would be an entirely different blog post. Like I said, a three-pointer seemed to appear at the right moments to wake Portland up.
New Orleans did outrebound the Blazers 44-37, but that is not surprising considering that LaMarcus Aldridge was out. Anthony Davis, Tyreke Evans and Al-Farouq Aminu combined for 25 rebounds.
Portland starters scored 103 of 111 points tonight. Just think about that. The bench did not perform as well as I think head coach Terry Stotts would have liked, but his starters more than made up for it.
Individually, Portland has some stars. Batum had probably one of his best games as a Blazer, if not his career, as he finished with 22 points on 8-for-16 shooting, 4-for-8 from three, 5 assists and 18 rebounds. In 45 minutes of play, Batum did everything and was essential to this victory. You can talk all you want about Lillard’s clutch play, but Batum kept this team going through the game. He was mighty impressive and all talk of him not being aggressive (including me) should stop now.
Lillard was cold-blooded once again in the fourth quarter. He scored 16 of his 27 points in the quarter and dissected anything the Pelicans would throw at him. After struggling for most of the game and going 3-for-10 at one point, Lillard came out of nowhere and was able to put up 27 points. This was just another stellar performance from the point guard.
Robin Lopez performed well against his former team. He finished with 19 points on 9-for-13 shooting and had 3 blocks. With LA out, Lopez becomes a legitimate scoring option, which is something that I think Blazer fans thought they would never say. That baby hook of his is surprisingly effective and his foul shooting, albeit a tad ugly is quite good.
After this almost relieving win, the Blazers fly on home to face the Golden State Warriors on Sunday night at the Moda Center. Whenever these teams meet, there is some bad blood. Expect many Bogut elbows and looks being shot throughout the whole game. This game is also extremely important. At the time of this writing, the Blazers are three and a half games ahead of Golden State in the Western Conference. A win at home would help tremendously and also force the season series to at least be tied at the end of the season. Either way Golden State will be tough, especially without LA. Tip-off is at 6:00 p.m. PST. Stay tuned!