Trail Blazers' Overtime Win Over Grizzlies Shows What They're Trying to Build

The Blazers are 1-0 in In-Season Tournament play and winners of three straight.

PORTLAND, Ore. — The vibes haven't been this good in almost exactly a year.

364 days ago, a Jerami Grant game-winner in Phoenix launched a thousand postgame interview memes. Things were never that good again in a Trail Blazers season that quickly went sideways. But for that short time in early November, the out-of-nowhere success story was what the Blazers were in the NBA.

Thanks to the In-Season Tournament, that's what the Blazers are again, at this second. They're young, they're rebuilding, they're missing their starting backcourt. They're also winners of three in a row after outdueling the spiraling Memphis Grizzlies in overtime on Friday night. They're already more than 10 percent of the way to their over/under for the season. They're undefeated in the games played on the technicolor courts the NBA is telling us matter more than the other regular-season games.

More than that, they're making good on all of Chauncey Billups' promises over the past three years of building an identity and competing.

The Blazers trailed by 10 with three minutes remaining and battled back to force overtime, ultimately outlasting Memphis. Shaedon Sharpe's block of a Luke Kennard corner three as the fourth quarter expired was the exclamation point on the comeback, and will stand as one of the highlights of the season, but it was a group effort that involved weathering a series of unlucky breaks.

Down the stretch, four clean three-point looks rattled in and out, including one from Grant that would have put them ahead. Grizzlies coach Taylor Jenkins won two straight challenges in the fourth quarter, including one that erased what would have been a Sharpe three-point play.

"There were deflating moments where it could have gone south real quick, and we kept it together," Deandre Ayton said after the game. "We've got so many leaders on this team. We kept our poise and relied on our defense to get us back in and get us some momentum on the offensive end. It really showed."

The only downer for this win was that Scoot Henderson couldn't be a part of it. He sat out, and will likely sit out in Sunday's rematch, after suffering an ankle injury in the second half in Detroit on Wednesday. He's going to be a big piece of this in the future, so it's unfortunate he wasn't on the court for what could be an early chemistry-building exercise. But this win, and the unexpected winning streak, is proof of concept for what Billups hopes this can be eventually, even if it takes a while to get there.

"We're showing everybody who we are and how we're gonna play," Billups said. "We're going to play hard and we're going to play together, at both ends of the floor. That's what I want our culture to be, period."

Sharpe, after a rough defensive first half, made the biggest plays of his career down the stretch, and earned his first-ever "MVP" chants from a Moda Center crowd that validated the NBA's belief that the In-Season Tournament would create stakes. Sharpe made two free throws to tie the game, then blocked Kennard's shot to send it to overtime, then made a three-pointer in overtime. The preseason spotlight was on Henderson, but the early returns of the season have Sharpe as the one who may have the highest ceiling of them all.

"I won't lie, I don't even know how I blocked it," Sharpe said. "I lost [Kennard], and then I saw the ball go that way and I just jumped. I saw it and I reacted."

Whatever comes of the Blazers' In-Season Tournament bid, a win like this, and the two before it in Detroit and Toronto, lend a lot of validity to the way they're going about this season's reset.

"It gives our guys confidence," Billups said. "Our fans love how we just grind all the time. When you have a team that plays with that type of heart and enthusiasm, a lot of times it's not about the letters on the back of the jersey. It's not about star power all the time. It's about guys going out and laying it on the line. People can get behind that. That's what we're trying to create and I think we're doing a really good job so far."