Around the NBA, it would seem the Portland Trail Blazers are falling on hard times due to its inability to close out games. One could make a case the Blazers are among the top teams in the league if each game lasted only 36 minutes. It’s when they get to the fourth quarter that the team loses focus and forgets they have another 12 minutes to play.
By mid November, the Blazers had given up fourth quarter leads in five of its nine losses through November 19. In two of those losses, they had built up a double digit lead only to lose late to the Detroit Pistons and the Houston Rockets in overtime. One would assume changes would have been forthcoming to help address the problem.
Unfortunately, it would seem nothing has in fact been done as the Blazers are still having difficulty holding leads late in games. Since that overtime loss to the Rockets in mid November, they have managed to cough up fourth quarter leads in three other games, including the latest disaster this weekend against the New York Knicks.
In that game, the Blazers went into the fourth quarter leading 86-76. The offense was scoring and the defense was playing pretty well. Once again, the team lost focus, allowing the Knicks to score 36 points in the fourth to come away with a 112-110 victory. This is a troubling trend for a team that has lost five of its last eight games with the last four losses coming by a total of 12 points.
In the loss to New York, the Blazers had a tough time containing forward Carmelo Anthony who went off with 37 points on 13 of 21 shooting from the field. He simply took them apart with drives to the basket or pull up jumpers from behind the 3-point line. Of course, it didn’t help matters that the Knicks’ bench was able to score 46 points in the game. The bench was led by Kyle O’Quinn who had 14 points on 7-for-8 shooting from the field, Lance Thomas with 13 points and Derrick Williams who added 10 points with three 3-pointers and a free throw.
It wasn’t like the Blazers didn’t have opportunities in the game to still come away with a victory at home. Unfortunately. All-star guard Damian Lillard has shown a recent tendency to make key mistakes late in these games, which is leaving the team with nowhere to go when they need a basket. Lillard finished the game with a team-high 29 points, but missed a wide open layup with 42 seconds remaining and followed that up with a bad pass to a wide open player under the basket with just 17 seconds left on the clock.
When asked about the game, Lillard said, “We should have won the game,” later adding “We went into the fourth with a 10-point lead. We had played well over three quarters. We just didn’t’ get it done defensively.”
With a record of 10-15 on the season, the team hasn’t been getting it done all season long. They have been playing better since a seven-game losing streak in mid November, but they have to learn that all NBA games are 48 minutes long.
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