Lillard wears Portland’s new margin for error: Zero
Portland threw away a gift-wrapped W, they have no mulligans left
Kenny Smith said the quiet part out loud before the ball had even tipped off. By resting reigning Finals MVP Kawhi Leonard on the front end of a back-to-back against the Portland Trail Blazers, before playing the replacement Brooklyn Nets on Sunday, it was clear that the Los Angeles Clippers had little interest in winning today’s game and had much more interest in sending a message to the Los Angeles Lakers that they wanted to give them as tough a path as possible, before the presumptive Conference Finals match-up between the L.A. teams. In the final moments, when Rivers elected to pull Paul George from the game, much like Mike Malone did with Nikola Jokic on Thursday, it seemed almost too good to be true that Portland could be so fortunate against two of the West’s top three teams in successive games. But it did prove too good to be true. Damian Lillard’s missed pair of free throws with 18 seconds left and the Blazers down one hung over the game’s end result, but there should be some ink spilled for Portland giving up a wide-open straight on 3-pointer to the Clippers on the possession prior, albeit one to career 33.7% shooter Rodney McGruder, who had shot 27% from the 3-point line this year.
Despite a great game from CJ McCollum offensively, he had a couple of tough defensive plays to close out the game, including an away from the play foul on an inbound pass when Portland lead 112-115, leading to a free-throw that Landry Shamet luckily missed. But McCollum had a foul on Patrick Patterson’s lay-up on the ensuing inbounds play, a result of the away from the play foul, to tie the game at 115. This sequence is just one example of Portland’s problem in this game: giving the Clippers too many bites of the apple with little mistakes. Lillard missed the free-throws, but Portland lost this game on both ends with uncharacteristically dumb plays, such as Jusuf Nurkic’s useless 5th foul with five minutes left. Awful box outs by Zach Collins and Nurk on Ivica Zubac. Even Gary Trent Jr., who had a wide-open corner 3-pointer finally miss in a clutch moment, couldn’t save the Blazers on Saturday afternoon.
And now, Portland needs to look no further than their leader’s number to see their margin for error for the rest of the seeding games. With three games left, their hopes of potentially having the upper hand in the seeding games hang by a thread. With Memphis’ thrilling comeback win yesterday over Oklahoma City and Portland’s unlikely loss today, the Blazers are now 1.5 games behind the Grizzlies with three games left to play. Portland has Philadelphia tomorrow in a back-to-back, followed by Dallas and then Brooklyn.
Philadelphia has struggled in the bubble and they just lost Ben Simmons for the rest of the season due to knee surgery, but they still have Joel Embiid, who can be one of the five best players in the league at any given time. This is even more important for Portland considering that they just got blasted by Ivica Zubac, Marcus Morris and JaMychal Green on the glass, giving up a 45-41 rebound advantage, which even without Hassan Whiteside is inexcusable for a team that has put so much into their frontcourt winning the match-up against most teams. In a match-up with Embiid tomorrow, Portland needs Whiteside’s hip feeling better or for the Blazers do a better job of team rebounding as a collective.
There’s no way to dance around this loss. It was brutal for Portland. But they also have little time to get caught up in the traffic behind them. Someone between San Antonio and New Orleans will move closer to the Blazers tomorrow and if it’s San Antonio, they will temporarily move into 9th heading into Portland’s game against Philly. They could also really use a win from the Raptors against the Memphis Grizzlies tomorrow, to bring the Grizzlies back to within a game. After that, Memphis has both Boston and Milwaukee left on the schedule.
But again, none of the things going Portland’s way matter at all if Portland makes another mistake. This is the bed they made by losing games they could have had earlier in this regular season, not to mention the last second plays against the Celtics and today’s mishaps against the Clippers. A play-in scenario against Memphis is what they came in here for but the disappointment of not getting the upper hand after it was just a few possessions away against the Clippers reserves could sting if Portland isn’t able to run the table. And we haven’t even talked about Phoenix, who still hasn’t lost a game in the bubble.
Portland is still in control of its own destiny for the play-in. And it was clear coming in that they did not fear having to play Memphis in a play-in scenario. But beating a young Grizzlies team that has outplayed expectations all year three times in a row is something almost as difficult, if not more, than Portland running the table now.
To be a threat to the current order of things in the Western Conference, consistently winning the games you should is now as important as winning ones nobody expects. All the talk about cinderella against the Lakers won’t matter if Portland can’t handle being favorites for a week against teams they can absolutely beat. With Portland’s next three games coming against teams that either have not played well in the bubble (Philly and Dallas) or are playing the NBA’s version of The Replacements (Brooklyn), doing the expected is something this Blazers team simply has to do. This means the mistakes that happened, all throughout Saturday afternoon’s game, have to go.