Portland Trail Blazers upset San Antonio Spurs 98-90; Spurs lose second straight: NBA Recap
Rookie Damian Lillard has been a revelation for the Portland Trail Blazers. On the night, he rookie point guard outshone San Antonio Spurs star guard Tony Parker and the Trail Blazers survived a late surge by the Spurs to unsettle them 98-90.
"Beating a team like San Antonio → the best team in the West, maybe the best team in the league → it was probably our best win this season because we played an entire game. We didn't have to come back. We were steady and played well throughout." Blazers coach Terry Stotts on the win.
Lillard scored the night high 29 points, grabbed 7 rebounds and dished out 6 assists, J.J. Hickson posted a double-double with a dozen points and the same number of rebounds while LaMarcus Aldridge added 22 points for the winning team.
"I don't know if it was fatigue, we just couldn't really ever find our rhythm." Tim Duncan said who followed up his monstrous game against Utah Jazz last night with 16 points and 6 rebounds. Tony Parker led the Spurs with 21 points while Tiago Splitter came off the bench to add 12 points.
The Blazers gave a considerably improved performance from the three point land as they went 7 out of 27 from behind the arc. On Monday they had set the league record for futility, going 0 of 20 from downtown, but still beat the Toronto Raptors 92-74.
Lillard made a jump shot early in the first period of the nationally televised game to put the Blazers up 4-0. It was close in the quarter with the score getting on 12 and then again on 17 later in the period. The Blazers were up by two at the close of the quarter.
Lillard scored 5 straight points for the Blazers to put them up 29-25. Both teams kept each other in check with no one piling a big advantage throughout the quarter. Portland went for an 8 nil spurt to go up 47-40 with 1:06 left in the first half and were leading 49-45 by the end of the period.
The same trend continued early in the third period with the score getting tied on 53 and then again on 57. However, the Blazers shifted gears and started pulling ahead late in the quarter. They pushed their lead to 74-64 with 46.4 seconds left in the quarter and the Spurs were trailing 69-76 by the end of it.
The Blazers extended their advantage to 83-71 after two minutes of play in the final period. San Antonio put up a fight and cut the gap down to 81-85 with about five minutes remaining and it was still a three point game with 1:47 left on the clock. But Portland put brakes on the Spurs charge and Nicolas Batum sank a three pointer to seal the deal.
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