Postgame Notes - December 22, 2017 Denver 102, Portland 85 Game #32 • Home Game #17 TEAM • The Trail Blazers reserves outscored their Denver counterparts, 50-22. • Portland forced the Nuggets into 14 turnovers while turning the ball over just 10 times. It is the first time this season that Portland has had 10 or fewer turnovers in consecutive games. • The Trail Blazers had six steals while the Nuggets had four steals. • Portland held the Nuggets to seven three-pointers (of 25). Portland has held its opponents to seven or fewer three pointers in four consecutive games, representing the second longest streak in the NBA this season (five, L.A. Lakers, Nov. 8-15).
PLAYER • CJ McCollum scored a team-high 15 points (7-19 FG, 1-5 3-PT) to go with three rebounds and three assists. • Shabazz Napier scored 14 points (6-15 FG, 1-5 3-PT, 1-2 FT) to go with four rebounds, a season-high five assists and three steals. It is the first time in his career that Napier has scored 14+ points in three consecutive games. • Pat Connaughton registered 12 points (5-6 FG, 1-2 3-PT, 1-2 FT) and four rebounds. It was the fifth time this season that Connaughton has scored in double figures. • Zach Collins scored a career-high 10 points (4-6 FG, 1-1 3-PT, 1-2 FT) to go with two rebounds and two assists in 18 minutes before fouling out. The two assists tied his career high. • Jusuf Nurkic rounded out the five Portland players in double figures with 10 points (4-10 FG, 2-4 FT) to go with one rebound. • Ed Davis logged eight points and seven rebounds in 20 minutes. • Nikola Jokic had 27 points (12-21 FG, 2-6 3-PT, 1-1 FT), eight rebounds and six assists. It was the seventh game this season that Jokic has scored 20+ points. • Wilson Chandler recorded his second double-double of the season with 21 points and 11 rebounds.
HEAD COACH TERRY STOTTS On the game: “We didn’t play a very good game. Obviously they won every quarter, they rebounded the ball well. I thought our bench guys did a good job for a while in the first half, got us back in the game. We just didn’t do very many things well enough to come close to winning the game tonight.” On their effort: “We didn’t have a lot of pop, I would say that. I always have a hard time differentiating effort and not playing well.” On starting Jake Layman: “I didn’t want to run up Shabazz’s (Napier) minutes as a point guard and I liked Pat (Connaughton) coming off the bench, kind of keeping the same rotation. I thought it’d be the best minutes for Jake to get out there with the starters.” On Denver getting to the basket: “First quarter, 26 out of their 28 points were in the paint. That’s not good enough. You can’t give up 26 points in the paint in a quarter. We didn’t put much resistance in the paint handling their dribble handoffs and challenging shots at the rim.”
JUSUF NURKIC On Denver scoring in the paint: “I don’t know, just an overall bad game for us. It’s easy to make excuses and stuff, but we didn’t do the job we were supposed to do and the fact that our best player didn’t play, we didn’t know what it’d look like, but we found out right now. In this league when someone’s not there, it’s next man up, so we didn’t do our job and they got the win. On confidence at home: “No, with this team I don’t think it’s ever about confidence. For some reason we have a problem at home. We definitely want to win at home. If you want to be a playoff team you have to win at home. For some reason we have an issue right now, but like I said, there’s no quit, so we need to fight and figure it out.” On how concerned his is with their play: “We just need to be smarter. Sometimes we look great, sometimes we look really bad. We just need to be more consistent with whatever we do, offense or defense. Right now we struggle at both ends.” On Nikola Joklic: “He has a good game right now, there’s nothing wrong with it. We didn’t guard him and at the end of the day, they played their offense. We should know they’re going to play through him. We didn’t handle it.”
HEAD COACH MICHAEL MALONE On the win: “It’s a hell of a win, obviously. I asked the team before the game, ‘what happened on February 27th, 2013?’ and everybody looked around like ‘I have no idea.’ I said ‘that’s the last time we won in this building.’ So with Damian Lillard being out, obviously, they’re not their full team but neither are we and with our defense tonight and with Gary Harris, Nikola Jokic, Trey Lyles, Mason Plumlee, it was a complete team at both ends of the floor. And most importantly we took care of the basketball and that was not what held us back from winning on the road so I’m very proud of our guys.” On holding the Trail Blazers to 85 points at home: “I think you have to give Gary Harris a lot of credit. Any time CJ McCollum was in the game, I put Gary Harris right back in the game to matchup with him and I think Gary embraced the opportunity to guard him. He was relentless in his pursuit, he was into CJ and now after Gary Harris I have to give our bigs a lot of credit. They set a lot of ball screens, they set a lot of flair screens and I thought our bigs were communicating, helping out when they needed to and our guys embraced the opportunity to guard those guys for 48 so it’s great to get a division win on the road. We felt that at OKC, home against Minnesota, we let those games get away and tonight we were able to put it away, which is great.” On if Nikola Jokic took his matchup with Jusuf Nurkic personal: “For the first time. For the first time, especially in the second half. To start the game we weren’t matched up a lot because of obviously their line-up, second half they put Nurk [Jusuf Nurkic] on him and I was really curious to see what happened. Because think in the past, Nikola hadn’t been as aggressive as he needed to be. Well tonight I think he got over a mental block, he went out there and attacked, was so effective all over the floor; scoring, rebounding, playmaking. Which is obviously what makes Nikola the great player that he is.” On how close he was to pulling Jokic from the game when he got his 4th foul: “Not close. I knew if I pulled him at that point I felt things would go south very quickly, in this building with these fans. He’s smart, as long as he wasn’t guarding Nurkic, we kept Mason [Plumlee] who I think did a great job guarding Nurk down low. I knew I couldn’t take Nikola out, he’s too important to our team. I thought Wilson Chandler was great tonight by the way. They were kind of chipping away, staying in the game and Wilson hits a really big three and for the game he winds up with 21 and 11. A very aggressive Wilson Chandler, which is what we talked about pre-game, an aggressive Wilson Chandler is an effective Wilson Chandler.”
MASON PLUMLEE You’ve played this team three times since being traded, you finally broke through. What was the difference tonight? I just think our defense was good. Obviously, we had guys play great on the offensive end Joker and Wilson, but we really made it tough for them to score tonight and that helped us. Coach called you personally the anchor to the defense. What are you doing to warrant that name? Defending the basket, making things hard around the rim, and also communicating through the back. Talking guys through the defense. It’s easier with this team because I know what they’re going to do before they do it, but letting them know what’s coming before it comes. If you know what they’re going to do, how did you keep them from doing it? A lot of the game plan was to take away CJ’s stuff because he can get going. But we were up, we were aggressive and made other guys beat us. Tonight they didn’t shoot well from 3. I thought a lot of that was us being able to stay on the perimeter guys and make it tough for them. Do you like the combo of you playing with Jokic?Yeah. I like it. He’s easy to play with. Early on in the game, we exploited him on the post because we didn’t think they could guard him with a 4 down there. He did a good job scoring. It can be a good combination for us. Your reaction when Jokic dunked the ball? I was impressed. I was more impressed with the side step going for the fade, but he had some impressive plays tonight. How nice was it for you to play this way here in Portland? A division game. A team where it came down to us and them for a playoff spot last year. So, you have to realize all these games are important. Every game with OKC is important. Every game with Utah is important. Every game you want to win, but some games more, and that’s what this was tonight.
JAMAL MURRAY Coach mentioned how long it’s been since you won here. Do you remember what he said? Yeah. He just mentioned the day the last time we beat Portland, and tonight we changed that. No one in this locker room is surprised. How did you do it? We outscored them. I thought we did a good job with our game plan and coverages and we limited CJ to a lot of tough shots. Did you notice Jokic was being extra aggressive? Yeah. He has his days where he just does what he wants and no one can stop him, and today was one of those days. I think he took the matchup personally and went at him the whole game.
NIKOLA JOKIC How do you think you played tonight? I think I got open shots in the beginning and then I just kept going… just to score. I think that helped my teammates. Of course, I think we didn’t have many assists, but I think the ball movement was good. We shared the ball, and the ball would find me. Was it in your thought process to be more aggressive tonight? No. How would you rate this defensive performance? I mean, we were really executing the defensive game plan. Being up in pick-and-rolls and just being aggressive and make them make mistakes. Even though they made a couple shots, they were tough shots and we were good at that. Did coach mentioning that you have lost 9 games in a row here play a part? I mean in 2013… I was back home driving horses, so I don’t remember that period, but I’m very happy to end that losing streak. Is this the best you’ve felt with the ankle since coming back? I mean, it’s still there. I just kind of fight through. I think it’s getting better, and I think it will do better in the next couple weeks.
Put all the parsley you want on the comments but we just stunk up the house. They beat us on matchups and defense.
