The Portland Trail Blazers lost to the Los Angeles Lakers 124-118 in their first NBA Cup match of the season. Luka Doncic led all scorers with 51 points along with 5 rebounds and 5 assists, while Damian Lillard and Deni Avdija paced the Blazers with 22 points each. Donovan Clingan added 14 points and 11 rebounds.
Both teams came out shooting blanks. It took until 9:25 for Luka Doncic to get the Lakers on the board, and another 25 seconds after that for Deni Avdija to do the same for the Blazers. Once
the lid came off for Portland, they did reasonably well on the offensive end. The Lakers struggled mightily for the rest of the first quarter from deep, going 0-12. Meanwhile, the Blazers shot 50% from beyond the arc, helping them build a nine point lead.
The Blazers weathered some adversity to maintain a decent lead for most of the second quarter. Clingan picked up some pretty weak fouls, his early foul trouble forcing him to the bench with 9:15 left in the half. It could have been a disaster, but thanks to Robert Williams III and… gasp… Yang Hansen, it wasn’t. The Blazers also had to overcome a real stinker from Scoot Henderson, who finished the half with two points, zero assists, and five turnovers. The Blazers led by as many as 16 in the quarter, but the Lakers fought back at the end of the half, and eventually cut the lead to seven on a stupid three-quarter court buzzer-beater shot from Doncic. The lead should have been greater, but things could have been worse.
The Lakers rode the momentum from that pre-halftime Doncic bomb into the third, and they kept chipping away at the lead until they tied it up at 68 with 4:46 to go in the period. Then the bottom fell out. Turnovers, missed shots, a lack of defensive stops… a laundry list of problems for Portland all surfaced at the same time. The Lakers built a 10-point lead before the Blazers sort of snapped out of it. Just when it seemed like the spell might be broken, an offensive foul against the Lakers was challenged, and it was overturned into a flopping technical foul on Sidy Cissoko. Momentum gone.
Things looked bleak well into the fourth quarter, but a gutsy 10-0 run gave the Rip City boys some hope. They got it down to six, but the momentum was short-lived. After a timeout from the Lakers the lead ballooned back to 12 points in a heartbeat. There’s no quit in the Blazers, and they cut it again to four with less than a minute to go, but the Lakers survived the free-throw game to hold off Portland.
What We Noticed
This was an ugly game for the Blazers in terms of turnovers. They finished with 24 overall, with Scoot Henderson and Deni Avdija being the worst culprits with 8 and 5 respectively. We’ve certainly seen worse games in terms of the volume of turnovers in recent years, but so many of the turnovers tonight were of the sloppy and momentum-killing variety. When the Blazers need to respond to the Lakers run in the third quarter, they instead coughed the ball up, accelerating the Lakers run to victory.
Player of the Game
We can acknowledge Damian Lillard and Deni Avdija each scoring 22 points, but who are we kidding? It was Luka Doncic’s game. He scored, whined, rebounded, complained, scored some more, argued, assisted, moaned, and simply dominated everyone on court, referees included. It was a tremendous performance.
Box Score
Up Next
The good news is that the Blazers are done with the road trip and get a few home games. The bad news is that they play without rest tomorrow against the San Antonio Spurs, and then host a back-to-back pair of games against the Oklahoma City Thunder starting Tuesday. The Spurs game is at 7:00 PM Pacific on Saturday.
