The Portland Trail Blazers' skeleton crew of healthy players and coaches fell to the Dallas Mavericks 132-117 on Monday night at Moda Center.
With seven players plus head coach Chauncey Billups in health-and-safety protocols, the Blazers fielded a team of just eight full-time players plus three recent G-League call-ups in Cameron McGriff, Brandon Williams and Jarron Cumberland. Top assistant Scott Brooks filled in for Billups. Portland, obviously, wasn't exactly at full-strength even before accounting for the continued absence of C.J. McCollum, still sidelined as he works to return from a collapsed right lung.
But the Mavericks were far from intact as well, with four key rotation players—including Luka Doncic—missing due to positive COVID tests. Despite their unfortunate circumstances, it wouldn't have been too much to ask of the short-handed Blazers to get a win on Monday night. Damian Lillard wasn't the star who proved too much for the opposition to handle, though. Kristaps Porzingis was by far the best player on the floor, tormenting Portland with length and overall size the home team had no chance of combatting.
“We fought as hard as we can; Porzingis is a foot taller than us,” Brooks said after the game. “We were double-teaming him and he was shooting over the double-team. We were boxing him out and he was getting rebounds over us. He's an All-Star player that played at a high level tonight.”
Porzingis finished with 34 points, nine rebounds, five assists, two blocks and two steals in 32 minutes. He shot 12-of-21 from the field and 3-of-7 from deep, routinely exploiting the Blazers' decision to switch smaller defenders onto him by facing up and turning over his shoulder for un-blockable jumpers.
Portland's tallest available player on Monday was 6'8” Larry Nance, who stands some seven inches shorter than Porzingis. Even Jusuf Nurkic and Cody Zeller, both in health-and-safety protocols, might have struggled to contain the Latvian star given the Blazers' switch-heavy approach defensively—a head-scratching one given both the absence of Doncic and Dallas' immediate, sustained success offensively from the opening tip of Monday's game.
But even a more prudent defensive gameplan might not have mattered given Porzingis' sheer physical advantages. Unfortunately for Brooks, his team will be forced to deal with that same dynamic as Portland waits for half its roster—seven-footers Nurkic and Zeller included—to clear health-and-safety protocols.
“We know what we're going through and we know it's not gonna be easy, but we just gotta keep fighting,” Brooks said. “Chauncey's done a great job of instilling that there's no excuses around here. That's part of developing, part of growing up in this league.”
Next up for the undersized, thoroughly depleted Blazers? A Wednesday matchup with the surging Utah Jazz and 7'2” center Rudy Gobert.
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