'Our Spirit Just Wasn't Right': Trail Blazers Embarrassed by Jazz
Portland's second 40-point home loss of the season came against the worst team in the Western Conference.
📍 PORTLAND, Ore. — First, a few positives.
For one thing, while Friday night’s loss to the Utah Jazz was the Trail Blazers’ second 40-point home loss of the season, they have yet to lose by 60, which they did twice last year.
Additionally, the Emirates NBA Cup™️ group stage is over, so the 141-99 final tally won’t hurt Portland’s point differential for tiebreaker purposes.
And if there’s a game on the schedule that’s good to lose, it’s one against this Jazz team, which came into the night 4-17, very much a threat to Portland’s lottery aspirations. This game could loom large in the standings.
To hear Chauncey Billups tell it, the Blazers had a great shootaround in the morning and he “really thought [they] were prepared,” only to be thrown off by Utah’s best player, Lauri Markkanen, being scratched from the lineup at the last minute.
“They’ve got some guys out and you feel good about what’s going on,” Billups said. “I always think those are dangerous games. Obvious letdown games. But anybody that puts a jersey on in the NBA is a great player. Sometimes their roles are different, but you’ve got to respect every single person that puts on a jersey. And we just didn’t do that. For some strange reason, we felt like we were the better team in this game, and they showed us that we weren’t.”
In Markkanen’s absence, Portland got beat by Svi Mykhailiuk, Johnny Juzang and Brice Sensabaugh. Nine of the 10 players Jazz coach Will Hardy played scored in double figures. Blazers legend Drew Eubanks had 12 points, nine rebounds and two blocks in 17 minutes off the bench. Walker Kessler had a Donovan Clingan-esque night, with 17 rebounds and five blocks to go along with his 13 points. Portland couldn’t stop anybody, and the Jazz got to the rim at will (76 points in the paint).
“Our spirit just wasn’t right,” Billups said.
A few Blazers players had solid individual box-score nights on Friday, but there wasn’t much to like in this one. Deandre Ayton was bad enough that, despite being their only healthy center that plays significant rotation minutes most nights, Billups benched him for the rest of the game two minutes into the second half, explaining that he “didn’t like his spirit.”
It’s going to be ugly some nights in a rebuilding season. At least this time, there were a few injuries to key rotation players Portland could point to: Clingan, Robert Williams III and Scoot Henderson, plus Toumani Camara, who left in the first quarter with a foot injury.
But while a lot of losses are expected with a young team, a 40-point home loss is different from a run-of-the-mill loss.
“Hell yeah it is,” Jerami Grant said afterwards.
The Blazers have already had one come-to-Jesus loss this season, the 45-point disaster last month against Memphis that had Billups calling his team “losers” on the record to reporters afterwards. Nobody went scorched-earth like that on Friday.
“I’m not undercooking this thing at all,” Billups said. “I’m pissed off. You can believe that. But I also think we’re going to be much better than this going forward. We’ll be alright.”
The only reason that doesn’t sound ridiculous coming after a game like this is because they already got through it once. After that Grizzlies blowout, they won their next three in a row and have largely been losing games “respectably” since then, as these things go.
Another positive: after they play the Lakers on Sunday in Los Angeles, the Blazers have four days off before their next game, at home against San Antonio. That will give everyone time to reset and, more importantly, get healthy.
There will be another one of these performances at some point between now and April. Probably more than one. If there are too many of them in a short amount of time, that’s when some of the tough conversations need to be had. The Blazers avoided that last month by winning a few games. Maybe they will again this time.
It comes with the territory of being a team in the stage of the rebuild, but that doesn’t make it good for anybody in the moment. And as time expired on Friday, the quarter of the Moda Center crowd that was still there rained down the loudest boos that have been heard in the building all season.
“It's tough to be booed, but sometimes you feel like you deserve it,” Grant said. “Losing by 40 to a team that now has five wins…
“We've got to get our shit together.”
How many times can the effort or "spirit" be wrong before you have to start looking at the guy in charge of making it right and say.... Maybe you aren't the right guy.
@Sean Do you have any update on Scoot? This seems like the deadliest bruise I've even seen... He has missed weeks and Hollinger just eviscerated him on the Athletic with how he has shown almost zero improvement..