This is Starting to Feel Like Last Year's Trail Blazers Second-Half Run

📍PORTLAND, Ore. — Over the weekend, I had an unfamiliar feeling watching the Trail Blazers play the Spurs in San Antonio.

Over the first half of the season, the Blazers have been in countless games where they led early and then blew that lead with a cold shooting spell or a string of self-inflicted turnovers and bad decisions. It happened on opening night against the Timberwolves. It happened in Miami and Dallas on an early-season road trip.

They were also in some games they had no business being in after mounting late comebacks, against Chicago in November and Detroit and Orlando last month.

And every time they've found themselves in a close game, a late turnover or missed shot (or, more often, some missed clutch free throws, which have been a problem) has caused me to say out loud, either to myself watching a road game at home or to my seat mate on press row, "They're definitely losing this game."

Saturday's game in San Antonio was the first time, in a game that came down to the wire on the road against a good team, that I never had that thought.

The Blazers have certainly been in enough clutch games through the first half of the regular season that you'd hope they'd be better at closing them out.

And they are.

I had the same feeling watching them get two wins in three days against the Houston Rockets, both of which came down to the final minute. Even when the Rockets went on a third-quarter run and entered the final quarter up 13 on Friday, I never thought the Blazers were out of it. After they started the fourth on an 11-0 run to cut that deficit to two, I had a feeling they'd find a way.

It's starting to feel a lot like the second half of last season, when these kinds of wins went from novel to expected.