Portland Trail Blazers: 3 takeaways from close-win over Knicks

Here are three takeaways from the Portland Trail Blazers win over the New York Knicks:

Well, it wasn’t very pretty, but a win is a win. The Portland Trail Blazers snuck past the New York Knicks, 118-114, improving to 12-5 on the year and maintaining their first place position in the Western Conference.

Through 3.5 quarters, the Blazers were mostly playing down to their 4-13 competition. The Knicks are in the midst of developing their younger players and learning who will become bigger parts of their core moving forward. For most of the game, however, the Blazers played them as if they were juggernauts in the East and found themselves amid a shootout.

At one point, they got down by 10. However, after a smartly used timeout, the Blazers came back out, erased the lead, and didn’t look back, even gaining an 11-point lead towards the middle of the fourth period.

But the Knicks kept it interesting, no doubt.

Here are three takeaways from the Blazers win over the Knicks:

The Blazers defense was awful tonight.

No matter how you spin it, the Blazers played some of their worst defense of the season against the Knicks, especially on shooters from beyond the arc.

Several times throughout, Portland’s big man either sunk too low to contest a Trey Burke pull-up from deep, their guards didn’t close out on shooters, or they simply dared guys to shoot at the wrong time.

The Blazers may have come into the game happy to let the Knicks hoist up shots from deep. New York is currently ranked 28th in the league in three-point percentage (31.7) and 29th in three-pointers made (9.7).

However, once Emmanuel Mudiay hit a couple from deep and even Enes Kanter nailed one on a sagged-off Jusuf Nurkic, Portland should’ve adjusted more quickly.

But that was the problem – through almost three-quarters of the game, the Blazers just didn’t seem interested in defending them. It seemed, instead, that they were banking on the Knicks falling back down to earth, and that they could simply outscore them.

It took the team falling behind by 10 in the third to come back out with a new defensive intensity and focus. Luckily for them, it wasn’t too late.

The second-unit helped save this one.

Although the bench was nonexistent in the first (Nurkic, Damian Lillard, and CJ McCollum combined for 29 of the 33 period’s points), they came alive in the second half.

Both Meyers Leonard and Evan Turner deserve shout-outs for that.

Because Zach Collins got into foul trouble early, committing his third early in the second, Leonard was asked to step up and fill in some of his minutes. While Leonard got off to a slower, more tentative start, once he knocked down one of his patented flame balls, he began to assert himself more.

He hit three shots from beyond the arc altogether He ended the game with 15 points and three boards.

Not only was he hot from deep, but he also looked engaged defensively – even when some of New York’s shiftier guards came barreling down his way.

Evan Turner has become a major part of the Blazers identity this year, and this game was no different. He has become a sort of jackknife for the team, able to facilitate the offense and score when he has an advantage over his matchup.

Tonight, he played a pivotal role in the win, as his late-game put-back sealed the game for the Blazers with nine seconds to go:

Turner finished the game with 10 points, six rebounds, and four assists.

The clock didn’t strike Dame… but CJ found his groove when it mattered most.

Damian Lillard’s fourth quarter effort will be something he’ll likely want to forget, save for a big step-back jumper over Burke in the final minute of the game:

Beyond that though, he seemed to be pressing out there tonight. Several possessions in a row, he would take a Nurkic screen only to hoist up a shot from the midrange or a badly contested three – one of which even airballed, which is very uncharacteristic of him. Moreover, at one point in the game, he turned the ball over and, determined to make up for his mistake, committed a reach-in foul and sent the Knicks immediately to the line because they were in the bonus.

In this game’s case, Dame-Time was not an event but a short moment of brilliance. He ended the game with 29 points, eight assists, and six rebounds.

His co-star in McCollum, however, was more than solid down the stretch. Of his 32 points, 13 came in the fourth. It wasn’t so much that he was playing more “efficiently” or “smarter” than Dame, it just so happened that his shot was falling.

Like this one:

He was instrumental in erasing the Knicks’ largest lead of the game and bringing the momentum back to Rip City’s side.

Coming up next, the Portland Trail Blazers take on the Milwaukee Bucks at 5:00 P.S.T. on November 21.