The Portland Trail Blazers are in the thick of a tight race for standing in the Western Conference Play-In Tournament this week. You wouldn\u2019t have known it from their outing against the New Orleans Pelicans on Thursday night. Portland came out flatter than a yeast-free pancake, giving up 65 points in the first half and letting the Pelicans think they had a legitimate shot at the victory.<\/p>\n
Fortunately, Portland pulled it together in the second half, forcing turnovers and stroking long shots to put away New Orleans 118-106<\/p>\n
Jrue Holiday was the leading scorer for Portland in the game with 27, carrying his team through a decisive fourth quarter. Jeremiah Fears led New Orleans with 21.<\/p>\n
The win takes the Blazers to 40-38 on the season. Their standings rivals, the Los Angeles Clippers, are currently losing to the San Antonio Spurs and will likely finish the evening with a 39-38 mark.<\/p>\n
Others scored more, but Toumani Camara\u2019s three-point shooting really saved the Blazers when they needed it. Camara finished the game with 6-12 beyond the arc, 23 points total. Without him there\u2019s no floor-spreading, no pressure that let the Blazers streak ahead over their more-energetic opponents.<\/p>\n
Camara wasn\u2019t alone. The Blazers aren\u2019t good at shooting threes, but they\u2019re willing to take a lot of them. New Orleans isn\u2019t good either. They take very few. Portland\u2019s 20-51 rate beyond the arc provided an insurmountable edge compared to the Pelicans at 9-24.<\/p>\n
I hate to say it, but this Pelicans club looks pretty good when they\u2019re at full strength. They\u2019d look GREAT with a certain player currently wearing #5 back in the fold. If they had an experienced, defensive-minded, pick-your-spots point guard to set up all of those young scorers, New Orleans would be dangerous. A little discipline, a little depth, and who knows? Don\u2019t tell anyone.<\/p>\n
The Blazers will have a couple days of before traveling to Ball Arena to face the Denver Nuggets on Monday night at 6:00 PM, Pacific Time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Portland Trail Blazers are in the thick of a tight race for standing in the Western Conference…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":696055,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3784],"tags":[7,601,37790,6,687,471,63976,3967,1617],"class_list":{"0":"post-696054","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-gameday-coverage","11":"tag-nba","12":"tag-portland","13":"tag-portland-trail-blazers","14":"tag-portland-trail-blazers-discussion","15":"tag-portlandtrailblazers","16":"tag-trail-blazers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116341529888418772","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696054","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=696054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/696055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=696054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=696054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=696054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}