Trail Blazers' Worst Loss of the Season and a Learning Experience for Anfernee Simons
Plus, What We Saw in the Blazers' collapse against the Clippers and the Jersey of the Night.
PORTLAND, Ore. — The Trail Blazers haven't had a lot of bad losses this season. Most of them, even the ones on this current skid, are games they were in late or mounted a spirited comeback effort that fell just short.
Tuesday night was a bad loss.
At home, in their only TNT game of the year, against a Clippers team missing both of their franchise players, wasting a 37-point night from Anfernee Simons and blowing an 18-point second-half lead—that's a bad loss. Their worst of the year, even.
And Simons, the hero for much of the night, took the blame for not demanding the ball late as the Clippers' defense bottled him up.
"In those situations, you kind of read it," Simons said after the game. "Getting the ball and demanding that attention, I think that's what I should have been doing. They were denying me the ball, and there were moments where I didn't realize I needed to go get it. It's a learning experience. I'll be ready next time I'm in that situation."
It's been an up-and-down season for Simons in his first year in this role. He can get very hot, very quickly, but he's often struggled shooting early in games before settling into a rhythm in the second half. He's had to make two adjustments at once—both playing with Damian Lillard in, for lack of a better term, the CJ McCollum role, and when Lillard is out, running the show with much better players than the tanking group he had in the second half of last season.
The slow start wasn't an issue for Simons against the Clippers. He barely missed through three quarters. But when the Clippers' defense started forcing him into tougher looks in the fourth quarter, and he missed a few in a row, he began deferring. In his fifth year, he hasn't fully realized yet that the Blazers gave him a $100 million contract this summer exactly for games like this.
"That's something that me and Ant will talk about," head coach Chauncey Billups said after the game. "It's a part of his development. Ant is 22 years old. He's a phenomenal talent already, but he's still got growing to do. We can't act like he's 32, like Dame. He's still got some developing to do."
This was the first game of the season where the Blazers let go of the rope. The first time they lost to a team with clearly less talent on the floor. Even with their own injuries and Lillard's absence, the Paul George- and Kawhi Leonard-less version of the Clippers is a team Portland should be able to put away. And they were, until they weren't.
"Those are the most dangerous teams in the league," Billups said. "Look at us, how shorthanded we were and went to Phoenix and got a win. There's a natural letdown that happens. No matter what we say, as players, as coaches, there's a natural thing that happens. But I thought we were in good shape, until the fourth quarter."
What We Saw
For paid subscribers, notes, thoughts and observations from the game, plus the Jersey of the Night:
Josh Hart twisted his left ankle early in the game and briefly exited to get examined, but ultimately came back in and finished the game. In the locker room after the game, he had that ankle planted in a tub of ice for a solid 20 minutes before getting up and walking very slowly into the shower area. Hart has become a fan favorite because he leads the team in what Locked On Blazers host Mike Richman calls That-Dog-In-Him-Per-36-Minutes, but I have a hard time seeing him playing another game in less than 24 hours.
There were four former Blazers in the game for the Clippers, at one point all sharing the floor at once: Moses Brown, Robert Covington, Nicolas Batum and Norman Powell. Batum got by far the loudest cheer from the home crowd, but Covington and Powell got nice receptions, too.
Powell went off for 22 points in the fourth quarter (32 overall on the night), clearly taking it personally that the Blazers traded him less than a year into a five-year contract he'd signed just that summer. He won the Clippers the game.
Your nightly ridiculous Shaedon Sharpe highlight was actually a missed dunk over Batum that would have been in contention for dunk of the year if he'd finished it:
Billups, asked before the game about Sharpe's recent struggles: "He's 19. He's just young, man. This game is tough. And he's not like any other seventh pick in the draft. He's not coming to a team where you can throw him the ball and say, 'Do whatever, we'll live with whatever, just get better.' That's not the position that he's in, or me. He got off to a pretty good start, and he's gonna have some great moments. But also what happens on the flip side is you get thrown into the scouting report. Those things you can do against anybody when he was 18, playing in high school or at Kentucky in practice, these dudes are grown men and they pay attention. And they don't want to be on that poster. So that's kind of some of the stuff that he's struggling with. And then defensively, being locked in sometimes. So it's just a lot. You're not a surprise anymore. But he's gonna be perfectly fine. These are good lessons for him."
I have to wonder if this kid originally came to the game hoping for a Paul George or Kawhi Leonard autograph, and then had to pivot to a different sign when he saw the injury report.
Speaking of Reggie Jackson, I'm at a loss for how the Clippers handled it when he hit his head, hard, on the floor going for a rebound near the end of the first half. He went down and stayed down, and none of his teammates noticed they were playing four-on-five or fouled to stop play to get him out, leading to an open Simons three. Then, on their next offensive possession, it took a few seconds for Ty Lue to call a timeout. When Jackson was helped off the floor, he didn't go back to the locker room to undergo concussion tests—he simply went back to the bench. I was shocked when Jackson not only came back out for warmups at halftime, but started the second half—and played the entire half. He wasn't terrible, even hitting a couple of threes. But it was uncomfortable to watch him wander aimlessly around the court at both ends of the floor. I can't speak to what tests the Clippers' medical staff did or didn't run, but he shouldn't have been playing.
Nassir Little went out in the second half with what the team called a right hip strain. His status for tomorrow in Los Angeles against the Lakers is yet to be determined—I'll bet he doesn't play. But talking to him after the game, he didn't seem to think it was anything too serious.
Also on the injury front, Chris Haynes was in town doing sideline for the TNT broadcast and reported on the air that Lillard is targeting a return this Sunday at home against the Pacers. I wrote over the weekend that that game would be the most logical date for him to come back, since it starts a four-game homestand and comes with several days off. It appears Lillard's camp is thinking along the same lines. Of course, he can "target" whatever date he wants, but it's ultimately the medical staff's call, and thus far they've erred on the side of caution with these things. So we'll see.
Greg Brown III is back with the team after spending the past two weeks in the G League with the Ontario Clippers. Law Murray of The Athletic just published a story about his time down there that's worth reading.
Jersey of the Night
Speaking of both Blazers and Clippers legends…