After a 4-1 road trip, the Portland Trail Blazers flounder their first home game in nearly two weeks against the young Milwaukee Bucks.
After a glorious and surprising five-game East Coast swing, the Portland Trail Blazers returned to the Moda Center. Hoping to keep their momentum alive to start the final 75% of the season strong, the Blazers came into tonight’s game against the Bucks with confidence. That was heightened with the return of Al-Farouq Aminu, who had missed the last few weeks with an injury.
Unfortunately for Blazer fans, the buck stopped there. A shaky but very impressive Milwaukee Bucks team, led by MVP-candidate Giannis Antetokounmpo, stomped on Portland to welcome them back home. The game wasn’t nearly as close as the final score indicates, as a majority of the highlights belong to the Bucks. This loss puts Portland at 13-9 on the season, and 0-2 against the Bucks.
Game Flow
It was a slow start for the Blazers. The Bucks finished the first quarter on a 13-2 run and led 33-21. Jusuf Nurkić and Khris Middleton had 12 points for their respective teams after one.
Despite coming out strong and scoring eight unanswered points in the second quarter, the Blazers just couldn’t keep up with the Bucks. Eric Bledsoe went into halftime with 17 points, and Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum combined to shoot 2-14 in the first half. Milwaukee led 60-45.
From that point on, it was all Bucks all the time. They led by as many as 21 points, and led by as much heading into the fourth quarter. Antetokounmpo continued to swat away shot after shot, holding the Blazers down on offense. Ultimately, turnovers and bad defense spelled trouble for the Blazers, who fell 103-91.
For the Blazers, Nurkić ended with a team high in points (25) and rebounds (11). Despite shooting poorly, Lillard added 18 points, seven rebounds, and seven assists while McCollum poured in 15 points, six rebounds and five assists himself. No other Blazer scored more than 8 points.
Known “Blazer-killer” Khris Middleton ended the game as Milwaukee’s leading scorer with 26 points. He shot 10-17 from the field, including 4-6 from 3-point range. Bledsoe finished right behind Middleton with 25 points, and Antetokounmpo looked very strong as well with 20 points, nine rebounds, five assists, and three blocks.
Three Takeaways
The “Evan Turner Experiment” in Portland has failed. It’s never a good thing to be known as a team who has given out an all-time, notoriously bad contract. That has officially happened to the Blazers. Two offseasons ago, Turner agreed to a four-year, $70 million with the Blazers. The team had hoped for him to improve their play on the wing, but got didn’t play too well during year one. Many, including myself, predicted and hoped for 2017 to be a bounce-back year for Turner.
It’s safe to say that tonight, combined with many other mediocre performances throughout the first quarter of this season, solidified Turner’s contract as terrible for Portland. He was able to pump his stats up in garbage time, but had six points and a -7 net rating for a majority of quarters two through four. He’s averaging just eight points, four rebounds, and two assists per game this season, vastly underplaying his paycheck.
Turner’s play on offense looks uncoordinated, and his defense has been lackluster at best. He has a chance to bounce back, but as this season continues, it looks more and more as though it will be his last in Portland.
The Blazers play incredibly sloppy. It hasn’t been pretty this season, and tonight attests to that majorly. Portland finished the game with 19 turnovers, nine more than the Bucks. Those 19 takeaways led to 29 points for Milwaukee, absolutely killing the Blazers.
Portland has also been in the bottom of the league all season in field goal percentage, shooting around 43%. They shot even less than that tonight, including 26% (6-23) from beyond the three-point line. In comparison, the Bucks shot over 48% overall and 30% from three.
They continued the impressive trend of hauling in rebounds, and that’s a positive. They had 50 boards to Milwaukee’s 35, one reason the final deficit wasn’t larger. But if the rebounds aren’t leading to points due to poor shooting, then the advantage in that category becomes pointless.
The “Big Three” tried to lead, but had too many missteps. Without the sloppy play and poor shooting, the Blazers might have had a chance to win this game. The team’s three best players showed up and tried to fight through the entire game. Nurkić, Lillard, and McCollum combined to shoot 23-53 from the floor, but they kept grinding and trying to score.
Lillard was able to get and-one’s while dishing out assists. Nurkić crashed the boards for more opportunities, and was aggressive defensively. Both Nurk and Coach Terry Stotts picked up technical fouls in the fourth quarter after arguing a bad call on Nurkić. He was hungry to win, but came up short, unfortunately. The biggest problem were turnovers, five from Lillard and six from Nurkić alone.
McCollum somehow didn’t hit the charity stripe, and couldn’t hit anything during the first half. He also had two turnovers, but was still able to move the ball around offensively to keep the Blazers in the game early. McCollum has been great in crunch time, and can score in so many ways to elevate Portland’s offense.
Next: Blazers get chance to prove defense against Bucks in rematch
Neither of those things happened tonight. And given how the rest of the night went, it wasn’t that much of a surprise.
Next Game
The Blazers play the New Orleans Pelicans this Sat. Dec. 2 at 7pm Pacific in Portland. Here’s hoping it goes a bit better than tonight.