Trail Blazers get bit by Timberwolves, 82-90

All good things must come to an end, and the Portland Trail Blazers felt the sting of a loss for just the second time in over a month, falling to the lowly Minnesota Timberwolves on the road, 82-90. The loss pulls the Blazers down to 17-5 on the season.

Recap

The first three quarters? You might want to forget about those first three quarters. The fourth, too, but especially the first three. Granted, playing the second game of a back-to-back on the road is tough, but this is the Minnesota Timberwolves we’re talking about here. Portland struggled mightily to match the Minnesota’s energy, to figure out a way for LaMarcus Aldridge to get going, and to hit anything resembling an open shot.

The Timberwolves opened up a 20, yes a 20-point lead in the third, and the funk coming from the Trail Blazers was headier than the inside of a tour bus of a C-list metal band. The Trail Blazers did their best to put on a run to open the fourth, and were able to cut the lead down to six a few times, but erratic effort, terrible shot selection, turnovers, and the TimberWolves’ rebounding doomed them. They were never able to make it over the hump, and the Timberwolves earned their fifth victory of the year.

Odds and ends

We’re going to forgo the usual “players” and “notes” sections: Damina Lillard was aggressive and played well early, Aldridge played could not get a shot to fall all game, and Thomas Robinson played his first minutes in a dog’s age. That about does it. Instead, we’re going to point out a few things the Blazers need to do better going forward.

• First, second, third, and every other ordinal number until you get into quadruple digits… the Blazers have GOT to stop playing poorly against bad teams. It’s just awful. Yes, they’ve gotten the lion’s share of wins against the teams they “need” to beat, but they are cutting it closer than you might think. While the Trail Blazers don’t necessarily need blowout after blowout to be an elite team, it would be nice to see them slam the door shut hard enough to rattle the windows now and again.

• Next is what to do when Aldridge gets shut down like he did tonight. The Timberwolves were swarming him early on, and it jostled the Trail Blazers to the point where they were unable to pass it around quickly enough to find open looks. If I were Head Coach Terry Stotts, I’d dedicate the next practice to having the deep bench guys play defense against the starting unit and just fluster the hell out of Aldridge and see what happens. You better believe other teams are going to look at this game and be licking their chops thinking they have the Blazers-killing silver bullet in their pocket.

• Also, we can’t forget about the bench. Chris Kaman can’t do all the scoring when the starters are taking a breather, and the problem with having such a strict rotation reared it’s head tonight. If Steve Blake or Allen Crabbe or C.J. McCollum (when he returns from injury) are having an off-night, it would be nice to have a few other bodies to throw into the mix. But… if you never play those guys, how can you expect them to feel comfortable when they’re number is called?

• Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, the Trail Blazers need to do something about turnovers. They coughed the ball up 20 times (not hyperbole) in this game, allowing 18 points off of the lost possessions. Turning the ball over is an absolute killer to a comeback effort. The Trail Blazers lost by only eight points; a deficit that could have been avoided with better ball protection.

The Trail Blazers will have a few days to lick their wounds and compose themselves before taking on the Chicago Bulls on Friday December 12th at 4:00 p.m. PST.

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