Two of the primary issues the Trail Blazers have encountered in the first five weeks of the 2020-21 season have been giving up huge leads and losing starters to injury. Thursday night in Houston, they did both.
After jumping out to a 20-point first quarter lead, the Trail Blazers fell behind by as many as 13 points and lost Derrick Jones Jr. to a left foot sprain in a 104-101 loss to the Rockets in front of a crowd of 3,154 Thursday night at the Toyota Center.
“I thought it was a good effort by everybody,” said Trail Blazers head coach Terry Stotts. “It was a great start, it was a great finish. We came up short, we had our chances in the fourth quarter, made a nice comeback and really competed. We were right there, it’s tough, they’re a good team playing at home. But I was pleased with how we played.”
The Trail Blazers are now 9-8 overall and 4-3 on the road this season. The loss ends a four-game winning streak versus the Rockets.
Despite playing another game without Robert Covington (concussion) -- and not to mention CJ McCollum (left foot) and Jusuf Nurkic (right wrist) -- the Trail Blazers got their longest road trip of the season off to a great start Thursday night. Portland scored the first eight points of the game and used a 22-5 run to take a 30-10 lead with 2:51 to play in the first quarter.
With Damian Lillard scoring 13 points on 5-of-8 shooting, Enes Kanter and Derrick Jones Jr. combining for as many rebounds (11) as the entire Houston roster and the Blazers turning six Rockets turnovers in to nine points, the road team took a 32-17 lead into the second quarter.
After holding the Rockets to 28 percent shooting in the first quarter, the home team rebounded by shooting 61 percent from the field in the second and third quarters. The combination of the Rockets finding their shot and getting serious on the defensive end resulted in Portland being outscored 69-45 in the over the second and third quarters to take an 86-77 lead into the fourth.
“Our offense slowed down a little bit but they really pushed the pace,” said Stotts. “Their transition offense was the biggest difference in the second quarter.”
But after struggling to both slow the Rockets and find their own offense, Portland scored the first 11 points of the fourth, with Gary Trent Jr. coring nine of those, all on three-pointers, to reclaim the lead at 88-86 with 10:01 to play and set the stage for a nip-and-tuck finish.
And this time, it was Trent Jr. and Anfernee Simons, rather than Lillard, doing the majority of the fourth-quarter scoring. Trent Jr’s heater to start the fourth, Simons pitched in two three-pointers of his own, the last of which cut the Rockets lead to 102-101 with 3.1 seconds to play.
Portland fouled on the ensuing possession, with Eric Gordon making both free throws to push the advantage back to three. Simons got one more look at a three that would have sent the game to overtime, but the ball sailed well wide of the mark as time expired.
“They were a small lineup and we knew they were going to be doing a lot of switching, so we tried to get enough movement that somebody would pop open,” said Stotts of the final play. “It’s one of the reasons why, at the last minute, I substituted Rodney for Enes because they were playing everybody at the three-point line. You hope they make a mistake defensively with the movement.”
Unfortunately for the Blazers, the Rockets, statistically one of the best defensive teams in the NBA since they trade James Harden, made no such mistake.
“We were working hard, we were communicating, we were screening, we were moving the ball, we were playing at a good pace,” said Lillard. “It’s hard to do that, it’s hard to sustain it. We had a little bit of slippage with that and then we found ourselves in a game. We picked it up at moments for the second, third and the fourth quarter, we had our moments in each quarter, but we didn’t sustain that level that we came out with in the first quarter.
'When you don’t do that and you playing against NBA teams, especially a team like Houston with guys who have ability, you put yourself in a dogfight on the road and you put yourself in position where you got a chance to lose the game. That’s what happened.”
What’s more, the Blazers also lost Derrick Jones Jr. in the fourth quarter to a left foot sprain. Stotts said x-rays taken after the game came back “clear,” but his status for Portland’s next game is not yet known.
Lillard led all scorers with 30 points on 11-of-23 shooting to go with nine assists and four rebounds in 37 minutes.
Trent Jr, who got his second consecutive start in place of McCollum, scored 21 os his 23 points in the second half while also finishing with three rebounds, an assist and a steal in 38 minutes.
Enes Kanter had another double-double with 13 points and 13 rebounds in 32 minutes. Simons went 5-of-13 for 14 points in 28 minutes and Jones Jr. added 11 points, seven rebounds and three blocks before leaving the game in the third quarter.
Three Rockets starters eclipsed the 20-point mark led by a 25-point effort from Victor Oladipo. Christian Wood went for 22 points and 12 rebounds and John Wall added tallied 20 points, six assists and five rebounds in 29 minutes.
Next up, the Trail Blazers continue east to the midwest to face the Bulls Saturday night in Chicago. Tipoff is scheduled for 5 p.m.
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Trail Blazers Lose Game And Another Starter In Houston | Portland Trail Blazers - Trailblazers.com
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