New Orleans Pelicans (25-51, 12th in the Western Conference) vs. Portland Trail Blazers (38-38, ninth in the Western Conference)<\/p>\n
Portland, Oregon; Thursday, 10 p.m. EDT<\/p>\n
BOTTOM LINE: New Orleans looks to break its five-game slide with a victory against Portland.<\/p>\n
The Trail Blazers have gone 25-21 against Western Conference opponents. Portland ranks seventh in the Western Conference with 32.0 defensive rebounds per game led by Donovan Clingan averaging 7.2.<\/p>\n
The Pelicans are 16-31 against Western Conference opponents. New Orleans is second in the NBA scoring 57.4 points per game in the paint led by Zion Williamson averaging 15.7.<\/p>\n
The Trail Blazers are shooting 45.3% from the field this season, 2.3 percentage points lower than the 47.6% the Pelicans allow to opponents. The Pelicans are shooting 46.5% from the field, 0.5% lower than the 47.0% the Trail Blazers’ opponents have shot this season.<\/p>\n
The teams play for the fourth time this season. The Trail Blazers won the last meeting 122-109 on Jan. 3, with Deni Avdija scoring 34 points in the victory.<\/p>\n
TOP PERFORMERS: Avdija is averaging 23.8 points, 6.9 rebounds and 6.7 assists for the Trail Blazers. Scoot Henderson is averaging 15.1 points over the last 10 games.<\/p>\n
Williamson is scoring 21.3 points per game and averaging 5.7 rebounds for the Pelicans. Saddiq Bey is averaging 2.8 made 3-pointers over the last 10 games.<\/p>\n
LAST 10 GAMES: Trail Blazers: 7-3, averaging 116.8 points, 48.6 rebounds, 27.6 assists, 8.4 steals and 7.3 blocks per game while shooting 46.8% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 105.5 points per game.<\/p>\n
Pelicans: 4-6, averaging 112.3 points, 42.9 rebounds, 25.9 assists, 8.5 steals and 6.5 blocks per game while shooting 47.2% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 115.1 points.<\/p>\n
INJURIES: Trail Blazers: Jerami Grant: out (calf), Shaedon Sharpe: out (calf), Vit Krejci: out (calf), Damian Lillard: out for season (achilles).<\/p>\n
Pelicans: Trey Murphy III: day to day (ankle), Bryce McGowens: day to day (toe).<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive and data from Sportradar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By The Associated Press New Orleans Pelicans (25-51, 12th in the Western Conference) vs. Portland Trail Blazers (38-38,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":572365,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3784],"tags":[7,601,6,687,471,3967,1617],"class_list":{"0":"post-692259","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-trail-blazers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116330578815542181","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692259","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=692259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/572365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=692259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=692259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=692259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}