Two short-handed teams on the second night of a back-to-back collided in the Spurs\u2019 home opener of 2026, but unfortunately, the more shorthanded Portland Trail Blazers prevailed. After a slow first quarter, the Spurs found themselves down by 15 points a couple of times in the second before finally fighting back and even taking the lead a few times in a back-and-forth third quarter. Unfortunately, they took their foot off the gas to start the fourth, giving Portland room to build some cushion, and that would end up being just enough to stave off one last Spurs comeback attempt in the final minutes.<\/p>\n
Donovan Clingan was hot to start the game, scoring the Blazers\u2019 first 11 points, including hitting 3-3 threes, and another three from former Spur Sidy Cissoko forced a Spurs timeout after five minutes with them down 10-17. The lead was stretched as high as 12 with Portland hitting five of their first 8 threes while the Spurs missed their first five, several of which were open, before Julian Champagnie finally got one to fall. The Spurs bench fought back a bit, getting as close six at 27-21, but Portland recovered and led 35-24 after the first quarter.<\/p>\n
The Spurs continued to struggle to score or stop Portland in transition to open the second quarter and quickly found themselves down 15 a few times. The Blazers\u2019 hot shooting finally started cooling off as the Spurs upped their defense, but it took a while before they finally started chopping away at the lead as shots continued to roll off the rim on the other end. A few transition buckets off rebounds finally got them going offensively, and a 15-1 run got them within a point at 45-46, but the Blazers refused to cede the lead with a couple of threes, and the Spurs were still down 51-55 at the half.<\/p>\n
The Spurs finally took their first lead of the game to open the third with Stephon Castle finding Luke Kornet down low for five quick points, and the teams traded buckets and the lead 10 times throughout the quarter. The Spurs led by as much as three a couple of times, but after 11 minutes of what felt like a game of H-O-R-S-E that would never end, the Blazers used what felt like a \u201chuge\u201d 6-0 burst up the lead to 87-80 at the end of the third.<\/p>\n
Portland hit two threes to open the fourth quarter, and just like that most of the work the Spurs had done to get back in the game was undone with the lead back up to 13. A Harrison Barnes three helped stop the bleeding, and a couple of free throws and floater from him got them back within six, 91-97. The Blazers continued to keep them at arm\u2019s length for a while, but fourth quarter De\u2019Aaron Fox came back in and made back-to-back threes as part of a 8-1 run to them back within two with just over 3 minutes left. Portland responded with back-to-back threes before five straight points from Castle got the Spurs back within one, but after they had a chance but failed to take the lead, Deni Avdija, who had a 29-11-10 triple-double on the night, hit the back-breaking three to get them up four with 50 sec left, and the Spurs couldn\u2019t find another bucket, leading to a 110-115 loss, their second against a sub-.500 team this season.<\/p>\n
Up next: Tuesday at Memphis Grizzlies<\/p>\n
The Spurs won their two home games against the Grizzlies this season, ending an embarrassing streak of having not beaten them in SA since 2019. They didn\u2019t have Ja Morant in those two games, but they should this time. At the same time, without confirming he\u2019d play, Wemby will travel with the team to Memphis, so that\u2019s something to keep an eye on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two short-handed teams on the second night of a back-to-back collided in the Spurs\u2019 home opener of 2026,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":515507,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3784],"tags":[7,601,6,687,471,3967,52387,1617],"class_list":{"0":"post-515506","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-portland-trail-blazers","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-blazers","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-portland","12":"tag-portland-trail-blazers","13":"tag-portlandtrailblazers","14":"tag-spurs-game-recaps","15":"tag-trail-blazers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115835358751934831","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=515506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515506\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/515507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=515506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=515506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=515506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}