Sports Hey PDX February 9, 2025 0 Comments

Blazers Take Foot Off Gas, Get Butts Kicked

The Portland Trail Blazers faced a Minnesota Timberwolves team missing multiple starters on Saturday evening, notably All-Star scorers Anthony Edwards and Julius Randle. The Blazers had little pity; they’ve played with cobbled-together rotations most of the season.

Predictably, Minnesota had a hard time scoring against Portland’s newly-surging defense. The offense sputtered early but finally caught fire. Once they started pouring in points, the Blazers went up by 15 and looked to be on their way to an easy victory. But Minnesota dominated the fourth period with physical play and clutch buckets. When the final horn sounded, Portland stood on the wrong end of a 114-98 final score, not shocking in the context of their overall season but plenty humbling given their recent success.

Anfernee Simons led the Blazers with 21 points but shot only 3-11 from the arc in doing so. Nobody else scored more than 14, though Portland did get a healthy 41 points off the bench.

Here’s how this game was decided.

Minnesota Not Nice

Missing four starters, the Timberwolves didn’t have much going for them, at least organically. They made up for it with size and sustained commitment to scoring in the paint. Rudy Gobert scored 15 on just 6 shots. Jaden McDaniels registered a career-high 30 without hitting a single three-pointer. The ‘Wolves couldn’t out-skill the Blazers and they could only outrun them for isolated stretches. Bullying Portland physically became their “out” when they held a weaker hand.

Minnesota finished with 58 points in the paint, Portland only 46.

Offensive Rebounding

Not everything inside went Minnesota’s way. The Blazers destroyed the Timberwolves on the offensive glass for much of the game. Gobert had a natural size advantage over everybody in a Portland uniform but he couldn’t move fast enough to box out Deandre Ayton, Toumani Camara, and various Portland wings. The Blazers sliced and diced their Minnesota counterparts, substituting speed and timing for bulk. Portland ended up with an impressive 16 offensive boards against only 8 for the ‘Wolves.

Unfortunately Gobert had the last laugh. In the critical fourth period, which Minnesota won 38-14, the Timberwolves inverted the glass trends, limiting Portland’s second shots and getting their own misses. When the Blazers lost control of the glass, they also lost control of the game.

In the end, Portland scored 16 second-chance points, Minnesota 12. The scoring advantage didn’t match the raw rebounding advantage. That made the game harder for Portland.

Threes

The Blazers appeared to be stuck in mud early in the game when their three-pointers weren’t falling. Jerami Grant missed his first four attempts from distance despite getting wide-open looks. Portland languished.

That all changed in the second period when Anfernee Simons and Kris Murray drained long balls. Suddenly an offense that could barely keep pace surged ahead by double digits. The middle of the floor opened up, points came free and easy. and the Blazers created separation on the scoreboard.

Portland did just fine until the disastrous fourth when they shot just 1-13 from range. That completed a 7-35 overall effort. Shooting 20% from distance? That’s not good.

Razor Sharpe

Shaedon Sharpe looks so smooth scoring off the bench he could star in a razor commercial. Even the barest of screens is enough to give him space for his pull-up jumper. He got a couple in isolation as well. When he pulled up, the shot went down. That kind of mid-range mastery was impossible for the Timberwolves to stop. Sharpe finished with 14 points, shooting 6-14 from the field. A 1-6 clip on those pesky three-pointers is the reason his percentage and production fell. But dang, the separation he gets is impressive.

McDaniels and Reid

It was Naz Reid bobblehead night at Target Center, but the Timberwolves should have gotten some Krazy Glue and created a Reid-McDaniels Collectible Ettin figure instead. That two-headed monster pulverized the Blazers.

McDaniels was like a Sharpe-Camara hybrid. He shot 12-17 from the field for while playing defense like a fiend. The Blazers had this game in hand at halftime until he took over in the third period, keeping his team close enough to make the fourth period matter.

Meanwhile Reid shot 5-9 from distance on his way to 23 points. That’s 53 of Minnesota’s 114 from just two players, neither one a first or second option in their normal offense.

Two Bigs

Minnesota ran a two-big-man lineup in the early fourth quarter with Gobert and Joe Ingles. The Blazers didn’t have much trouble with one big, but the size of the pair exposed a few cracks in Portland’s defense. Ingles got into it hard with Camara, who was far quicker and more athletic but simply undersized. Ingles put his body into Camara and vice versa. Toumani didn’t always come out the winner in the bulk war.

Two-big-man lineups are growing in popularity again across the NBA. It’ll be interesting to see if this remains a challenge for Portland.

Robert Williams Goes Down

Robert Williams III played behind Deadre Ayton in this game, at least for 8 minutes, in which he hit 3-5 shots, grabbed 4 rebounds, and generally made life miserable for the ‘Wolves. Then he left the game with an unspecified knee injury and did not return. It’s the story of his career so far. We’ll watch for updates.

Live by the Sword

In Portland’s last game, against the Sacramento Kings, Anfernee Simons shot them to victory with a huge fourth-quarter barrage. With the game getting uncomfortably close against the Timberwolves, he tried again. Unfortunately he ended up shooting 2-8 in the period, missing 5 of 6 three-point attempts. Most of those came off of isolation looks, just as they did 48 hours ago. When those shots fall, he looks amazing. When they don’t…

Head Coach Chauncey Billups actually pulled Simons midway through the fourth in favor of the bench crew of Sharpe and Scoot Henderson. The offense didn’t look much better. Passes started going astray and shot selection was spotty. Eventually possessions devolved to Jerami Grant going iso just as Simons had, just without as much range. That didn’t work any better. Simons soon came back in.

Apparently it was a night of “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” for the Blazers. They shot 3-21 as a team in the final frame. Cue the sad trombone, then toss it in a blast furnace.