Sloppy Third Quarter Does Trail Blazers In Against Thunder
Despite their best shooting night of the season, Portland was outclassed by Oklahoma City.
📍PORTLAND, Ore. — 12 turnovers in a quarter is hard to recover from against anyone, but especially an inner-circle contender.
If you want one stat to show why the Trail Blazers lost a game to Oklahoma City by 23 points that was tied at halftime, that’s it.
After trailing by 17 points to the Thunder midway through the second quarter, the Blazers clawed back to even the score at the half. It was their best stretch of play of the entire season. Everything they say they want to be—a team that pushes the pace, defends and attacks—they were for about six minutes.
Against a team this good, it was too good to last. Those 12 third-quarter turnovers led to 19 Thunder points and Oklahoma City blew the game open.
The final score makes this game look like exactly what it was: the best team in the west playing one of the two worst teams in the west. But there was one thing the Blazers did well on Friday, that had been an insurmountable hurdle in their worst losses to this point.