For the Portland Trail Blazers and the Los Angeles Clippers, who played last Friday night, expectations were radically different upon starting the season. The Blazers, upon LaMarcus Aldridge’s departure to the San Antonio Spurs, were projected to miss the playoffs this year and receive a compensatory lottery draft pick, while the Clippers were assumed to be the Warriors’ chief competition to win the Western Conference. Coming into Friday’s game, though, both teams had started the season disappointingly due to a tendency to fade in the fourth quarter, with the Clippers having given up a 23-point lead in their loss to the Warriors on the previous night, so it was an open question as to which team would sustain itself better for a full 48 minutes.
As it turned out, the Blazers outdueled the Clippers 102-91, in part by reversing their fourth-quarter jinx. The score remained close for the first three quarters, with the Clippers shooting better than the Blazers but losing the battle on the glass. In the fourth quarter, though, the Blazers finally started to hit the shots that they had missed for much of the night. The crowd, intense already due to the closeness of the game, got louder as the Blazers pulled away with about four minutes left in the game, and it went positively insane when Damian Lillard hit back-to-back three pointers to put the Blazers ahead for good. If he had made another, the roof might have collapsed. When the Blazer lead hit double digits just before the two-minute mark, the outcome was assured and the remaining seconds became decidedly anti-climactic.
The games since Friday would seem to reinforce the opposite trends for the Clippers and Blazers, with the Clippers losing to the Toronto Raptors and the Blazers beating the LA Lakers on the road. Though it is still early in the season, the Clippers have issues despite their obviously talented roster with Chris Paul, Blake Griffin and company. The Blazers, for their part, may be better than people think, especially once their much-changed roster gets more used to playing with each other. I particularly hope the latter is the case. Regardless of the potential benefits of receiving lottery picks, I would not wish a tanked season on any team’s fans, except maybe the Lakers. As for Portland, and I do not say this lightly, it is a wonderful town. It deserves good basketball.
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