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📍PHILADELPHIA — After last season, I ranked all 82 of the Trail Blazers' regular-season games from worst to best. I'm not doing that again this year, but if I was, Sunday would be close to the bottom.
Coming off a less-than-impressive Friday win over a tanking Jazz team, the Blazers had the opportunity to start their last extended road trip of the season by continuing to beat the teams they're supposed to beat.
A Philadelphia 76ers team missing both Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey qualifies as one of those opponents. The Blazers blew out the Embiid-less Sixers at home last month.
"That's a game we should have won," Deni Avdija said.
I'd counter: if they had won, it would have felt like Friday's game against the Jazz, a win that felt like a loss because they let an inferior team hang around far longer than was necessary.
It started, as it has lately, at the beginning.
Before Friday's game, acting head coach Tiago Splitter talked about the need to prepare for a game against a bottom-dwelling Jazz team the same way they would to play the Oklahoma City Thunder. That night, they ended the first quarter down by 10 before getting serious.
On Sunday, the Blazers jumped out to an 8-0 lead over the shorthanded Sixers, so in that sense it was an improvement over the Jazz game. But they quickly allowed Philadelphia to catch up, turning the ball over five times in the first quarter leading to eight Sixers points.
The same lack of focus that has plagued them lately was there. Avdija turned the ball over seven times and Toumani Camara added four of his own. Jerami Grant missed a pair of late free throws that would have cut the deficit to three. (This is, by my count, the sixth game they've cost themselves this season at the foul line.) They let themselves get bullied inside by 2026 Andre Drummond, and were torched from the midrange by Quentin Grimes.
"They just ramped up the physicality," Splitter said. "We were not as physical as Philly. They were tough on the ball. They denied it every time. They were pressuring us and taking us out of our spots. We were trying to get those calls, but the referees didn't allow that physicality. We didn't match their energy."
"We didn't really come to play out of the gate," Avdija said.
As for why that keeps happening, he doesn't know.
"I don't really have an explanation for that right now," he said. "We have some more games left, and we're going to wake up. We can do something really good here. I'm really positive about this team and really positive about the guys. We're in a good state of mind. We're going to win some games, those close ones we've got to win. But we're going to learn from it."
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