HEAD COACH TERRY STOTTS “Well it was good to get the offense back on track. I thought we had a very good effort. Obviously, the fourth quarter got away from us, turnovers to start the fourth quarter and it kind of devolved into a one-on-one game. Not necessarily athletically pleasing, but it’s what it ended up being when they go small and just play one-on-one. On getting a lot from a lot of players: “It’s disappointing to lose. They’re the best team in the league right now and we competed and came up short, but we had a lot of good efforts from a lot of different players. That was very encouraging. After the last three games, it’s good to be in a game at the end against a really good team and like I said, we just came up short.” On giving up lay-ups down the stretch: “First of all I give credit to – Harden’s a great player and he’s difficult – we can say keep him in front and keep him away from the rim. My only disappointment was he got to his left hand a little bit more than I’d like but our goal at the beginning of the game was to take away their threes. They’re averaging 44 attempts and they only took 25. I don’t think they played necessarily the way they wanted to play. For the season, they’ve assisted 60 percent of their baskets and they didn’t do that tonight – what’d they have? 14 assists out of 40 – so we took out their passing, we took out their threes and they beat us with good one-on-one play.” What did you like about the offense? “Well, when Dame has it going that’s always encouraging. If Dame scores 22 in a half, I feel pretty good about our offense. But I just felt like there was a little bit more rhythm to it. It was good to see Chief make some shots. We got a lot of threes up and they were good threes. Pat was 0 for 5 from three but they were all good looks. I thought the looks that we got were pretty good. The only thing again discouraging about the offense were the turnovers, they kind of fed into the start of the fourth quarter. I just thought this was the type of game where we had a lot of spacing, a lot of shooting on the floor. It makes the offensive end easier.” On Zach Collins “Zach played well. He competed. He made some nice blocks. He’s really long, he really bothers shots. It would have been nice – he had two or three around the basket that could have gone in, but I thought he gave a good performance.”
DAMIAN LILLARD On ankle: “I just tweaked the same one that I rolled in Memphis. It was a little bit of a sensation, it was a little painful.” What do you think happened in the fourth? “I think they only had three misses the entire quarter. We know they’re an explosive team scoring and we had some turnovers. We knew that they like to get in the paint and make those passes out for threes and a few times – we had done a great job all night – then we come in and we leave Tucker in the corner for a three and in transition we ran to the paint because that’s natural for us to do, and Trevor Ariza gets a three on the right wing. I think up to that point, I think that’s when they took the lead on the Ariza three. It was two plays we had done a great job on the entire game and then at the end they just ran pick and roll. Those guys are great scorers. I thought we fought hard. I don’t know how many free throws they shot. It seemed like every time – I mean, it was a lot of free throws. You’ve got to be able to do something when you’re dealing with players like that and they’re doing all this tricky stuff. Some was fouls and some I didn’t think was fouls, but we could have done a lot of things better to hold on to the lead. We just wasn’t able to pull it out. They’re a good team.” You’re not into moral victories but is there a silver lining to this? “I’m definitely not into moral victories, but I think if we had that type of effort against any of the previous three teams, we might have finished this home stand 3 and 1. I think we all understand that you go through adversity in the NBA season, but it’s how you come out of it. I think this was definitely a few steps in the right direction. We played with a great rhythm offensively. I thought we competed really hard. We showed some care. We had some assertiveness to us. We lost a close game to the best team in the league right now, the best team in the Western Conference.” On offense tonight: “We just hooped. We didn’t run a lot of plays, we wasn’t looking to the sideline. We spoke to each other. Coach made calls and of course we was receptive to the coaching and everything that the coaches was yelling to us, but we just went out and hooped. They switched a lot of stuff, they started trying to blitz in my pick and rolls and just disrupt it, and it was like OK, Chief you open, Chief knock down the three – Meyers open, Meyers cut. It was just a much better flow to the offense and a level of confidence we need to have every night. That’s what’s going to give us a chance and we obviously had a great chance to win this one and just came up short.”
HEAD COACH MIKE D’ANTONI What was the goal with going with that small lineup? To win the game, obviously! We felt like we had a better shot at guarding them if we could switch everything, and it became more a less a one on one game. We stepped it up. Fourth quarter obviously, we did what we needed to do and got it done. But they played well. They followed their game plan. They took us off our 3s, and it took everything we had to beat them. This is the first we have seen Chris and James together in crunch time. Feel okay about it? Well, I told them that… and we’ve been talking about that we needed to get tested. We needed to have a fourth quarter. We needed to go to the last five minutes… but that’s enough! We did, and now we’ll work on it next month. It’s going to be good, and we hope we never have to get there. Was that just let those guys figure it out and let them decide who’s getting the ball, shooting, etc.? Yeah. For sure. And I know Chris knows James is one of the best 1-on-1 guys probably that every played, and Chris is right behind him and Eric is right behind him. We have plenty of possibilities. Trevor comes in and does a great job defensively, hits a big 3 for us. A lot of guys contributed. PJ on the defensive end. You just go through it and it takes a team effort, and we’ve got a deep team. Tonight, it wasn’t for the bigs, and it wasn’t for Ryan… but last year we didn’t have this. We got it now. You mentioned it becomes a 1-on-1 game… with that spread lineup does that take help away from James? I would think so because we got all shooters out there and it makes it tough. It works sometimes and sometimes it won’t. The good thing about our team, I think, is we have answers for everything. Whatever they want to throw at us we can either match up or do one better, but they played really well. When games get this close, how valuable is Chris’s IQ at that point? Well, especially when you’re over there as a coach it’s really valuable. You put a premium on that. About the waiting another month for a close game… was it something that you really did need to see? We’re riding high now. That’s great. We know we’ll have some bumps. It’s a long season, and we have to figure a lot of things out, but we just keep getting better and grinding out.
JAMES HARDEN On if there’s a team that will be able to stay in from of him and Chris Paul: “Probably not. We had to figure something out and in the fourth quarter we did a really good job, especially coaches putting the right lineup in. We were in attack mode. Defensively we were aggressive switching everything and making them just take one shot. Offensively we were getting downhill, we had a lot of shooters on the floor, so they weren’t really helping, so we got a lot of layups and threes at the right time. A little adversity when we needed it, we needed to fight back and win.” On playing a close game: “We needed it. We’ve been beating teams by 15 plus, so it was good to lock down when we needed to, get stops when we needed to and just give ourselves the best chance of winning and that’s what we did.” On how they stopped Portland: “We’re a really good team too. We’ve got a lot of guys that can guard and switch. We’re very versatile on both ends of the floor, so defensively we just put a hand up and made them take tough shots. They started off the game pretty hot, it was a rare chance that they were going to keep that up, continue that for the whole game. We just stuck with our routine and what we do, got stops and then scored.”
TREVOR ARIZA On defense in the fourth quarter: “It allowed us to stop penetration, it allowed for them not to isolate our bigs, pull up and shoot from way out there like they do with their two main scorers. It caused a lot of confusion.” On playing a close game: “It keeps us engaged for sure. It gives us a different look at things that we can face and it’s fun.” On their ceiling: “I think we just take it one day at a time, one practice at a time, one game at a time. Continue to grow from the good things that we’ve been doing and learning from our mistakes with the things that we haven’t been doing very well.”
TEAM • The Trail Blazers set a season high with 18 three-pointers, breaking the previous mark of 14 (three times, last 11/15 vs. ORL). The franchise record is 21. • Portland’s 98 points through three quarters tied a season high (10/18 at PHX). • The Trail Blazers extended their season-long losing streak to four games. • Houston’s 40 points in the fourth quarter is the most by an opponent in any quarter this season. • Portland’s 62 first half points matched the second-most of the season (66, 11/2 vs. LAL). • The Rockets’ 42 free throw attempts marked a new season high and were the most by a Trail Blazers opponent this season.
PLAYER • Damian Lillard matched a career-high with nine three-pointers, tying the franchise record he set three previous times and shares with Nicolas Batum. • Lillard’s nine three-pointers are the most by an NBA player this season. • Damian Lillard’s six three-pointers (of 10) in the first half tied the most by any NBA player in a half this season. The mark is one shy of his franchise-record seven three pointers in a half (shared by Wesley Matthews). • With five three-pointers, Al-Farouq Aminu logged his fifth career outing with at least five three-pointers. His career best is six.
Or that they could've helped. He's a great player, and he beat us one-on-one because we didn't want to help and give up 3s to role players. I credit James Harden. Can't get much dumber than that. It's like trading away minimal to marginal fanfare and allowing maximum damage in the process whule acting like there's no other option. Stotts coaches powerless, and these quotes show it. It's so dumb. He's such a weak coach.
