MODA CENTER, PORTLAND, OR — Whenever the Golden State Warriors visit the Portland Trail Blazers, I try to go out of my way to visit “PDX” up in the great Northwest. It’s nice and green, clean, and there’s public transportation everywhere.
Did I mention there’s no sales tax?! That’s right, strategize a little before you come here. The Nike Store (hint, hint!) is one block away from the Dubs’ team hotel and, last year, I bumped into Mark Jackson at the mall and the rest of his coaching staff at Chipotle.
Oh, and I ran into Andre Iguodala on the way to Moda Center.
Crazy thing is, while the team was on the bus, I took public transportation to the arena formerly known as the Rose Garden. They had to fight traffic. I had to fight light-rail stops. I got there only a couple minutes after they did. Literally saw them pull into the bowels of Moda before I got off the MAX and walked over:
Even better, the basketball gods love Warriors-Blazers matchups. In the aforementioned trip last April, Stephen Curry scored 47 points, but the Dubs lost in overtime. That was the game in which Andrew Bogut sat out and it was still unknown at the time what the diagnosis was.
Last March, before I figured out how great it was to visit Portland, Golden State snuck out with a 113-112 win, with both Curry and Klay Thompson giving memorable poses for great plays:
PRE-GAME
Even the damp weather couldn’t stop the locals from playing ball outside Moda Center before the game. It’s best saved for another story, but you probably won’t find this anymore in most places in the Bay — trust me, I run basketball leagues for a living:
There were plenty of #DubNation fans in the building and Curry rewarded a bunch of them with his autograph:
By the way, Curry would wear his new black colorways for this game:
At the pre-game presser, Steve Kerr addressed the slow starts in the Warriors’ past two games against the Sacramento Kings and the Los Angeles Lakers by ironically using the “it’s just part of the process” answer so often heard during Mark Jackson‘s tenure.
IN-GAME
Not surprisingly, this matchup offered up quite a few memorable highlights.
Andre Iguodala had a slam dunk off of a Festus Ezeli swat:
Kerr drew up a brilliant baseline out-of-bounds play that resulted in a Curry-to-Bogut smash:
Draymond Green added a little comedy, even though he ended up as one of the heroes:
And, of course, Thompson provided some oomph, in the clutch, no less:
POST-GAME
After the game, Curry praised Thompson’s performance, crediting Klay with “living in the moment”:
With the Warriors holding the potent Blazers to just 90 points, Curry also praised their team defense, calling it “five guys on a string”:
Thompson drew yet another big media scrum, as he should. He had the perfect words to describe his dunk:
Meanwhile, Curry was busy laughing at tweets he was reading on his phone. No word on what those were, exactly, but good spirits are certainly in order with wins like this:
As mentioned, Green stuck around in the locker room to talk to us about his wingspan.
In the end, yet another fun experience at Moda Center, this time with Klay clearly settling the “best-two-guard” debate versus Wesley Matthews.
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