Trail Blazers Fall to Celtics 116-115
Another above .500 team, another loss for the Trail Blazers.
The Portland Trail Blazers continued their struggles against winning teams with a 116-115 loss at the hands of the Boston Celtics.
Portland got out to a hot start, winning the first quarter 38-30 behind hot 3-point shooting. But the Celtics managed to close the gap on the perimeter and expose the Trail Blazers isolation-heavy offense.
Carmelo Anthony broke out of his weeks long slump with 25 points on 10-15 shooting – using a bevy of spin moves on the perimeter. Center Jusuf Nurkic was possibly Portland’s MVP. Despite only scoring eight points to go along with nine rebounds and seven assists, Nurkic did a stellar job facilitating the offense from the elbow when the team decided to run through him. Damian Lillard scored 28 points and had 10 assists, despite being hounded by a swarming Celtics defense and banging knees with Jaylen Brown – seemingly the 4th time he’s banged knees with an opponent in the last three weeks.
For the Celtics, Jayson Tatum led the way with 32 points including the dagger 3-pointer with less than 10 seconds left. Brown chipped in 24 and Kemba Walker tossed in 21 in the win. Portland native Payton Pritchard, playing on the Moda Center court for the first time as a pro, scored two points in 12 minutes.
Up next for the Trail Blazers – they face the 26-26 San Antonio Spurs on Friday night.
