Portland Trail Blazers take on sputtering San Antonio Spurs

The Portland Trail Blazers will take on a spiraling San Antonio Spurs team that will undoubtedly want to get back on track.

After losing a heartbreaker to the Denver Nuggets, the Portland Trail Blazers (13-9) will look to bounce back against the San Antonio Spurs (10-12).

The Spurs themselves have just as much motivation to right their own ship. They’ve dropped six of their last eight games. What’s worse, in their last two games against the Houston Rockets and Minnesota Timberwolves, the club suffered two of their worst blowout losses during the Greg Popovich era back-to-back. They lost these games by a combined 70 points.

San Antonio currently sits 28th in the league in defensive rating (112.1).  And with their reliance on promising but unproven guards like Bryn Forbes and Derrick White, Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum could rack up points and keep the Spurs’ defense reeling.

But the Blazers will have their hands similarly full with San Antonio’s stars, DeMar DeRozan and LaMarcus Aldridge. In their last meeting, DeRozan lit Portland up for 28 points. No doubt, Maurice Harkless will play a major role in containing him.

The battle between the Blazers centers of old and new could be one of the most intriguing aspects of the game. Jusuf Nurkic has regularly upped his aggressiveness against his most talented matchups this season, most notably Nikola Jokic and Nikola Vucevic. Let’s hope Nurk doesn’t just have a vendetta against guys named Nikola and provides the same type of play against Aldridge.

No doubt, it’ll be interesting to see how much time Aldridge spends on the low block and how often he tries to pull Nurkic out to the three-point line.

The three-point line should be a major emphasis for all the Blazers tonight, both defensively and offensively. Over their last two games, Portlands’ opponents have shot 28/60 from deep. The Blazers themselves have gone 25/61, a number that looks better until you remember its bolstered by a record-breaking 10 three-pointer game from Damian Lillard and a 5/8 performance from Nik Stauskas against the Orlando Magic.

Recently, Portland has failed to shoot consistently from deep as a whole team. They have yet to unlock the high-powered shooting their team should be capable of with players like Lillard, McCollum, Stauskas, and Seth Curry.

Speaking of Curry, he will likely get more minutes to find his rhythm, as Evan Turner is listed as questionable for tonight.

If Turner sits, we may see the Blazers play a more traditional backup point guard in Curry. Jake Layman will likely then take over the nominal small forward spot. Watch for a second-unit of Curry, Stauskas, Layman, Zach Collins, and Meyers Leonard to get it going from deep.

The Blazers will want to attack San Antonio’s guards, contain DeRozan, bank on Nurkic outplaying Aldridge, and get it going from deep.

See if they can do all these things and more at 4:00 P.S.T.