Portland Trail Blazers fall to Cleveland Cavaliers 3-point barrage

It’s still early, but the Portland Trail Blazers may need to get the panic button ready

Anfernee Simons continued his brilliant early-season efforts off the bench for the Blazers with 15 points on 6-11 shooting and just one turnover in 24 minutes.

The remainder of Portland’s reserves ranged from invisible (Nassir Little, Larry Nance Jr., and Tony Snell combined for zero points in 37 minutes) to confounding (Cody Zeller contributed seven points and five rebounds in just 14 minutes but somehow managed to post an unfathomable net -17 along the way). After some struggles with turnovers through the season’s first seven games, the Blazers coughed it up just five times through three quarters. But three costly giveaways in a three-minute span of the fourth denied them at least two opportunities to tie the game.

Portland leaned heavily on its backcourt tonight, with Lillard, McCollum, Simons, and Powell taking 73 of the Blazers 90 shots.

Head coach Chauncey Billups tried to get Nurkic involved offensively during a brief stretch in the third quarter, but the effort lasted only a few possessions and the Bosnian Beast was more like the Bosnian Blah the rest of the way, finishing with just six points to go with his nine rebounds.

With the incredible depth of talent across the Western Conference, the Blazers can ill afford to suffer losses like this one for much longer. And with Lillard’s recent re-commitment to Portland, CJ McCollum and Jusuf Nurkic’s agents should probably keep their cell phones charged at all times.

The Blazers return home to face Indiana on Saturday, but then will host the Lakers before heading south to play the Clippers and Suns on the road. Should the team return home from Arizona having lost all three of those contests, it may be panic time in the Rose City.