Postgame Notes - January 30, 2019 Portland 132, Utah 105 Game #52 • Home Game #29 TEAM • Portland matched its season high in scoring with 132 points (Nov. 1 vs. New Orleans). Portland has scored at least 120 points in five of its last seven games. • The Trail Blazers scored 45 points in the first quarter, marking their highest-scoring quarter of the season. Portland’s 74 points in the first half matched the team’s highest-scoring half of the season. • The Trail Blazers improved to 2-2 against the Jazz for the season, marking the third straight year that the two teams have split the season series. • The Trail Blazers outscored the Jazz on the fastbreak, 21-9. • Portland’s bench outscored the Jazz reserves, 42-30. • The Trail Blazers outrebounded Utah, 45-36, while the Jazz outscored Portland in the paint, 54-48. • Portland shot 53.3% from the field (48-of-90) and 50.0% from the 3-PT line (16-of-32) while holding Utah to 44.7% shooting from the field (38-of-85) and 32.4% shooting from deep (11- of-34). PLAYER • Damian Lillard led Portland with 36 points (12-21 FG, 3-7 3-PT, 9-9 FT) to go with eight rebounds, 11 assists and two steals. It was his sixth double-double of the season. Lillard netted 15 of his points in the second quarter. • CJ McCollum scored 30 points (12-17 FG, 3-5 3-PT, 3-4 FT) to go with three rebounds, one assist, two steals and one block. It was his ninth game this season with 30-plus points. McCollum scored 20 of his points in the first quarter on 9-of-9 shooting (2-2 3-PT). • In his first start of the season, Meyers Leonard scored a season-high 16 points on 6-of-7 shooting (4-5 3-PT) to go with six rebounds and four assists. The four assists matched his career high (11 times). • Zach Collins tallied 12 points (3-8 FG, 1-2 3-PT, 5-6 FT), eight rebounds, one assist and one block in 23 minutes off the bench. • Jake Layman recorded 11 points (4-8 FG, 3-5 3-PT), five rebounds and three assists off the bench. It was the seventh time in the last nine games that he scored in double figures. • Evan Turner finished with five points, four rebounds and five assists in 19 minutes. • Seth Curry had eight points on 3-of-6 shooting (2-3 3-PT) to go with two rebounds. It was his third game in a row with at least two three-pointers. • Donovan Mitchell led the Jazz with 22 points (8-16 FG, 1-3 3-PT, 5-6 FT) to go with four rebounds and two assists. It was his 13th consecutive game with at least 20 points.
HEAD COACH TERRY STOTTS “A really good win. The offensive first half was really fun to watch – threes were going, the ball was moving, getting out in transition. And our defense got a lot better in the second half after a slow start in the third quarter. I don’t know what they had, 9 quick but they only had 22 in the quarter. I loved our defense in the third quarter after kind of getting off to a slow start. They cut it to 11 and we were able to build it mainly with good defensive plays.” What goes into your decision making on what you’ll do when you find out Nurkic isn’t going to play? “I knew today – I mean, you prepare that he may not play. So starting Meyers and then after that, you want to figure out a rotation. I tried to match Meyers up with Gobert most of the night, but it wasn’t necessarily that way the entire night. Then going into it, it was just going to be on a feel, how the game was going, being prepared to play Moe and Chief at 4 or 5, see how Zach did, worry about foul trouble, all those things on the front line.” How did Leonard and Collins play? “I thought Meyers played well. When he makes his threes, when he shoots it when it’s open – a lot of times, unfortunately for him, a lot of times his game is defined whether he’s making threes or not, but I thought he played a solid game. He was physical inside. Defensively, he’s one of our better talkers defensively in communicating what’s going on. We had a couple slip-ups with some lobs, but I thought we rebounded from that pretty well.” How will you handle the four days off after having three days off? “The next three days are off – they earned an extra day tonight.” You left Lillard in – were you trying to let him get a chance to get the triple double? “I kept him in at the beginning just because CJ didn’t have much of a blow, I wanted to get him a couple more minutes so that I wouldn’t have to bring him back in later. Obviously, it got to a point where he had a chance to get a triple double and I gave him a shot at it.” On McCollum’s night and starting 9 for 9: “He was terrific in the first quarter – I think he had 20 in the first quarter. That’s why I didn’t even stick to the normal rotation, I left him in a little bit longer than usual. Dame had the two fouls, so I extended his minutes in the second quarter, and then Dame came in and had a second quarter. They both had it going tonight.”
DAMIAN LILLARD Was that one of your best wins of the season? “Yeah, that was a real good win. We were shorthanded without Nurk, I think coming out we obviously make shots early. Our defense wasn’t great but I just thought the energy of the game, the pace of the game, we were sharp. We had a really big first half. They hadn’t had a run yet in the game. They made their run in the third quarter and kind of answered it right away. I think it was like 70 to 80, they cut it to ten. I think we cut a run off of like 8 straight, it went from 10 to 18 and we brought it home after that.” What did you think of McCollum’s first quarter and the shot he made that looked like a pass? “That’s when you know you hot. He like threw a lob and it went in, I was like alright, he hot.” What did you think of Leonard stepping in for Nurkic? “He was ready. It’s funny because today at shoot-around me and Meyers was just talking about tonight, we was talking about how we was stiff a little bit at shoot-around and he was like we’ve got to be sharp tonight, we have to bring it tonight. Then we found out Nurk wasn’t playing and me and him were sitting in here talking and he was like, ‘I’ll be ready.’ So we talked over some situations about how Gobert is going to be in the paint so in the pick and roll for him to pop back to the three, be ready to shoot the ball – being active in the paint, guys coming downhill and I thought he had a really, really solid game.” You came a few rebounds short of a triple double: “I didn’t want to chase it. Coach left me out there a little bit to see if I can go get a few rebounds and do it. After a few minutes I came to the side and I was like, man just take me out. I don’t want to be out here hunting it this bad. He took me out. During the timeout, he took me out. I wanted to get it but I didn’t want to get it like – I didn’t want it to be like that.” On Leonard’s defense against Gobert: “I thought he did a good job. He’s always difficult with his length. Gobert has good timing on both ends of the floor. So just always being in the middle of a guard coming at you and Gobert behind you, knowing it’s a lob threat but also not wanting to allow a guy to get a lay-up, I thought he did a good job of being in between. Mitchell had some good finishes, but Meyers was there. It was tough finishes. Gobert didn’t just have his way. It was good to just see Meyers have a presence having to fill in for Nurk.”
HEAD COACH QUIN SNYDER On tonight’s game: “I think, obviously, Portland played well. The first quarter, I thought we didn’t do enough early. They were able to make some plays and make some shots and the game got away from us in the first quarter. Defensively, we can’t give up 45 in one quarter. You know, really, a lot of people – Layman hit a three, Leonard hit a three, CJ was terrific, and we just collectively have to be better defensively. You know, when were able to cut it to 10 but you gave up 45 in one quarter, it becomes a long game and you spend a lot of energy trying to get back in the game and we weren’t able to do that.” What were the breakdowns defensively? “Well, there was a lot of them. I’m not going to analyze the game right now and go through everything we didn’t do right. Some of the stuff early, it wasn’t a break down it was just – guys made some shots and you know, there was a handout that contested with, there wasn’t enough, so it wasn’t any one thing, just us being more dialed in competitively. You know, we can do that and sometimes when you do that, guys make plays and make shots and you know, we got hit – we got blitzed with that and like I said, we try to respond. I thought we did respond, but we weren’t able to stay at it long enough.” On Grayson Allen: “I mean we gave up a 45-point quarter, so you know everybody’s got to be ready – that happens and we just look for a way to find something that guys can dig in on and play better and wanted to give him a chance to help the team.”
DONOVAN MITCHELL On coming back from a large deficit “It’s hard to come back when you give up 45 points in one quarter, no matter how well you play the rest of the game… We didn’t execute how we wanted to defensively. We’ve played the Blazers four times and we should know [how to defend them]. On playing the Blazers for the fourth time this season “The Blazers didn’t feel our presence [on defense]. The first two games they felt us and we imposed our will and we didn’t do that in the past two.”
RUDY GOBERT On defense “The first quarter and the Blazers scoring 45 points… we started the game fouling, especially CJ [McCollum] and Damian [Lillard]. They came out firing and hitting tough shots… We reacted a bit in the second quarter but when you’re down 20 points… we had to chase them the whole game.” On the third quarter “I think our offense hurt us. We stopped moving the ball and sharing the ball. We gave up a lot of transition points in the third.”
JAE CROWDER On differences in this game from previous matchups “The Blazers just attacked us. They didn’t feel us at the start of the game and those guys had a big first quarter and that led to a big game.” On trying to make a run later in the game “They got the 50/50 balls when it came down to it, when we got it within ten points. They found a few 50/50 balls and capitalized on them and they got to the free throw line. It made it tough to dig ourselves completely out of the hole when we tried to go on a run.”
