The Portland Trail Blazers sent one of the Western Conference Semifinal series to a seventh game by taking down the Denver Nuggets with a decisive 119-108 Game 6 victory. The win came thanks in part to Damian Lillard’s performance and the motivation his mass text brought to the team.
CJ McCollum told Yahoo Sports' Chris Haynes that after landing home following their Game 5 loss — a lopsided 124-98 defeat — the phones of all the Blazers began going off, with a text from Lillard awaiting them:
“Dame basically said our season isn’t going to end like this,” CJ McCollum said. “He said we’ve come too far to go out like this. So, we did what we had to do.”
After receiving the message, other players — including Al-Farouq Aminu — quickly added their own words of encouragement on how they weren’t ready for the season to end. For Lillard, it was just another act of leadership, and something he needed to do in order to remind the team of who they truly can be:
“I just wanted to remind my guys that it wasn’t over,” Lillard said. “It didn’t matter if we lost by 20 or 30 or 50. We lost, and it only counts as one. We needed to get Game 6, and I wanted to make sure everyone was on the same page with the text.”
While McCollum didn’t share exactly what he said in the group chat, he did say it was a simple message: If the Blazers do what they’re supposed to, they can force a Game 7. They did just that in Game 6, with Lillard and McCollum combining for 62 points, and Rodney Hood boosting the team from the bench en route to their victory.
The Nuggets and Blazers will now head back to Denver for one last game and a chance at the Western Conference Finals on the line. Both teams have had extremely promising seasons but aren’t ready to be done yet, so it’ll be exciting to see how this one finishes.
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