The Portland Trail Blazers brought the early energy they needed to make up for a massive rest deficit against the Oklahoma City Thunder. Once the jumpers stopped falling and the clock started winding, though, they looked every bit a depleted, veteran team playing a much younger, fresher foe on the back half of a road back-to-back.
The Blazers fell to Oklahoma City 98-81 on Monday night at Paycom Center, their second defeat in just over 24 hours. But unlike his team's blowout defeat to the Chicago Bulls, Chauncey Billups found little to no fault with Portland's effort against the lowly Thunder.
“I'm not discouraged,” he said after the game. “I'm not disappointed at all.”
Billups wasn't completely shrugging off a loss to a franchise that's as close to outwardly tanking as any since the “Process” Philadelphia 76ers. Oklahoma City was without Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, too.
But for a team that relies on the long ball as much as Portland, especially with Damian Lillard sidelined, shooting a season-worst 18.4% from beyond the arc—including an unbelievable 3-of-28 after the first quarter—might as well be a death-knell.
“For the most part, it was just one of those games where you couldn't make a shot,” Billups said. “I thought we played the right way, we just couldn't make anything.”
Anfernee Simons shot it worst for the Blazers, going 3-of-16 overall and 2-of-12 from deep en route to eight points, his lowest total since December 29th. Jusuf Nurkic went 7-of-12 but scored just 14 points. Norman Powell needed 15 shots to get 17 points, while Robert Covington missed all five of his field goal attempts, each from three.
C.J. McCollum was the lone member of his team who found the touch on Monday, mostly during a typical display of impressive shot-making in the first quarter. But even he never got it going from long-range, missing five of his six three-point attempts.
“Defense wasn't that bad,” he said. “Offensively, just coming up short. A lot of missed threes. A lot of good looks that didn't fall.”
The Blazers move to 21-30 on the season, still tenth in the Western Conference. They're just two games up on the San Antonio Spurs for the last spot in the play-in tournament, suddenly closer to falling out of it altogether than the ninth-place Los Angeles Lakers.
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