The Portland Trail Blazers continue their road trip with a matchup in Minnesota against the Timberwolves today. The Blazers are looking to make it three straight wins on the road after picking up W\u2019s over the Brooklyn Nets and Indiana Pacers in their last two matchups.<\/p>\n
On the other side, the Timberwolves are also winners of two straight against the Phoenix Suns and Utah Jazz. They currently find themselves sitting in the fourth seed in the Western Conference standings. The Blazers are tied with the Los Angeles Clippers for the eighth and ninth positions.<\/p>\n
Portland Trail Blazers (34-36) at Minnesota Timberwolves (43-27) Fri. Mar. 20 \u2013 5:00pm Pacific<\/p>\n
How to stream: BlazerVision in Oregon and Washington; League Pass everywhere else<\/p>\n
Trail Blazers Injuries: Damian Lillard, Shaedon Sharpe, Yang Hansen (out); Vit Krejci (questionable).<\/p>\n
Timberwolves injuries: Anthony Edwards (out); Naz Reid (questionable).<\/p>\n
Seeding implications. We have reached the point in the season where every win or loss is incredibly important for how the NBA Playoff and Play-In race shakes out. Both Portland and Minnesota find themselves in the thick of a close race late in the season. For the Blazers every win is important in trying to grab the coveted eighth seed, which would give them an inside track to the postseason in the play-in system. The Timberwolves have jumped up to a homecourt advantage spot and hold a one game lead over both the Houston Rockets and Denver Nuggets. Both teams need every win they can get to improve their position as the season winds down.<\/p>\n
Who steps up? Minnesota currently finds themselves without the services of Anthony Edwards, out with inflammation in his knee. They have been led by some strong performances by a couple different players. Julius Randle has been the first option, but Ayo Dosunmu and Bones Hyland have stepped up in the absence of Edwards to provide scoring from the guard spots. Portland will have to put defensive pressure on the secondary players around Randle to make the Timberwolves really feel Edwards\u2019s absence.<\/p>\n
The Timberwolves\u2019 offense mostly got what they wanted throughout Wednesday\u2019s 147-111 victory over the Utah Jazz. Their 39 assists in the win mark a new season-high, as does their point total (in a non-overtime game).<\/p>\n
Playing 27 minutes, Dosunmu dished out six assists with just one turnover. It was a great all-around performance as evidenced by him also adding 23 points, steal rebounds, and three steals. For one night, the offense didn\u2019t seem to miss Edwards all that much.<\/p>\n
Ok fans, we don\u2019t often do this, but this is shaping up as one of the defining games of the late season for Portland. Who wins it? Can the Blazers overcome or will this be another example of collecting wins against poorer teams then falling as soon as stronger contenders come to play? Share your prediction in the comments below!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Portland Trail Blazers continue their road trip with a matchup in Minnesota against the Timberwolves today. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":669172,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3784],"tags":[7,601,56618,37790,6,687,471,3967,1617],"class_list":{"0":"post-669171","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-blazers-game-previews","11":"tag-blazers-gameday-coverage","12":"tag-nba","13":"tag-portland","14":"tag-portland-trail-blazers","15":"tag-portlandtrailblazers","16":"tag-trail-blazers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116262780928778242","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669171","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=669171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669171\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/669172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=669171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=669171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=669171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}