Portland Trail Blazers down Denver Nuggets 101-93, win their fourth straight: NBA Recap
Denver Nuggets broke the record of futility from three point land, going 0 of 22 from behind the arc, as Portland Trail Blazers took full advantage to drop them 101-93 here at the Rose Garden on Thursday night.
Interestingly, the Blazers set the record of futility only 10 days ago when they went 0 of 20 from downtown in their 92-74 win over the Toronto Raptors.
Nicolas Batum led all scorers on the night with 22 points and 6 rebounds; veteran J.J Hickson had a monstrous game with 18 points and 18 rebounds for the night, and Damian Lillard collected the second double-double for the Blazers
with a dozen points and 10 assists. Wesley Mathews also contributed 20 points.
It was a disappointing performance by the Nuggets camp. Andre Iguodala had 13 points, going 0 of 6 from downtown, while Ty Lawson added 13 points and dished out 8 assists.
The Blazers got off to a flying start as a Hickson dunk made it 7-0 early on and Mathews fired two from three point land to leave Portland leading 15-8. He was red hot early in the game, he then made two back to back jumpers to
push Blazers advantage to 23-10, and they were leading 25-14 by the end of the period.
The Nuggets were struggling to score baskets from distance and Luke Babbit on the other end sank two back to back three pointers early in the second period to push Blazers advantage to 36-18. Later on, Denver started slashing the
deficit and a 6-0 run followed shortly by an 8 nil spurt cut the gap down to 32-38, 4:08 minutes from halftime. The Blazers were leading 50-40 by halftime.
Hickson bank shot early in the second half had the Blazers advantage up to 58-42 and a Matthews shot from behind the arc a minute later had them leading 61-47. The Nuggets started cutting the deficit later in the period and they
were trailing 61-69 by the end of the quarter.
Denver kept up the good work in the fourth period and made it a 4 point game early in the quarter. The Blazers went for a 7 nil run to go up 78-67 but the Nuggets came back again to make it 81-84 with 4:06 on the regulation. However
a handful of free throws and some three pointers confirmed Blazers a win in the end.
Hickson was pleased that they got the win after stopping the Nuggets charge late in the game, he said
"We all took it upon ourselves individually to step up and not do anything out of the ordinary, but just do a little bit more and it would make up for him not playing, I think we did a great job with that."
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