Trail Blazers Mount Big Comeback, Then Blow 17-Point Lead to Spurs
Jerami Grant's big night wasn't enough to prevent Portland's fifth straight loss.
📍 PORTLAND, Ore. — Is it encouraging that the Trail Blazers, down by 10 at the half to San Antonio, won the third quarter by 18 and built a 17-point lead in the fourth quarter, or is it frustrating that they blew that lead and ultimately lost?
The answer is yes.
On paper, it’s an ideal result for an organization still chasing lottery balls: some good individual performances and a close, competitive loss. But this is one of those games that makes me tell people there’s a cost to the constant losing. Even knowing what the deal is for this season, this wasn’t a loss anyone on the team was taking in stride.
“We’ve got to win these games,” Jerami Grant said. “We had the game, especially after the third quarter we had. Yeah, you can look at the positives in the game and things like that, but this is a game we’ve got to have.”
Grant is one of the most even-keeled players I’ve ever covered. He didn’t even raise his voice when he was saying that, but it was the most agitated I’ve ever heard him after a game. The losing gets old, especially losses like this, which would have been one of their most well-earned wins of the season if they had pulled it out after clawing back from that first-half deficit.
“We built a lead, and then we kind of went away from what we were doing to get the lead,” he said. “It’s definitely tough.”
It was especially frustrating for Grant to lose this game because it was his best performance of the season. He had 22 of his 32 points in that third quarter and made eight three-pointers. Anfernee Simons also had a breakout game with 30 points on 8-of-15 shooting.
There were other positives, too. Donovan Clingan returned after missing seven games with a knee injury. He was limited to 15 minutes, but he looked like himself, albeit with a little rust that you’d expect after being out three weeks. He was credited with zero blocks in the final box score; I counted at least three in real time, plus a deflection while guarding Victor Wembanyama. Jabari Walker started at center and actually held his own against Wembanyama despite a laughable height disparity (when you watch him on the court with other NBA players in person, it looks fake). Toumani Camara had a career-high four blocks and Deni Avdija had another strong performance off the bench.
But the Blazers once again didn’t come out with the right urgency, and then once they found it to start the second half, they couldn’t sustain it.
“We just couldn’t get it going offensively in the first half, but our defense was humming pretty good,” Chauncey Billups said. “We had a couple of tough stretches. We come in down 10 at the half, and I told them, ‘Just keep playing the right way.’ We were getting good looks. We created good opportunities that we just couldn’t make at that time, and then boom, we catch fire, just playing the right way. I was happy that we didn’t get bored playing the right way. We did that.”
If they had won, Billups would have been able to stop there. My own notes for my postgame video hit for the radio station I work for looked much the same.
But the final half of the fourth quarter happened, too.
“I thought we continued it on a little bit in the fourth,” Billups said. “You’re up 17, and I thought we, as a group, let our guard down. I really did. I thought we let our guard down.”
That seems to keep happening. Whether it’s the last home game, the dreadful 42-point loss to Utah that Billups said was because they let their guard down with Lauri Markkanen out, or this one where they were up 17 in the fourth and then took their foot off the gas, the losses where the explanation is something like that are adding up.
Lottery goals or not, winning one of these once in a while would be good for morale. There’s still a lot of season left to go.
Can't wait for this season to be over.