Trail Blazers Embarrassed by Clippers: Post-Game Interviews

The Portland Trail Blazers were unceremoniously obliterated by the Los Angeles Clippers on Wednesday night, losing 80-113 after trailing by 40+ points. The starters were pulled partway through the third quarter, none of them reaching double-figures in their time on the court. CSN NW brings us the post-game interviews.

Ed Davis

What game is this for them? Like eight, nine? I mean, it’s early in the year. Obviously they are playing well right now. They’re a deep team, they got a lot of guys at the end of the bench that are established in this league, so they definitely have a lot of depth. They’re playing well right now and, you know, hats off to them.

Is this a case of them playing really well or y’all playing not so well, or both?

Both. You know, we used a lot of energy last night to try to fight back, and that’s one thing that the second unit, we have to do a better job of, is finishing team when we can so Dame (Lillard) and CJ (McCollum) don’t have to do all that for us to squeak out a win, as in last night where hopefully we could have rested them in the fourth and we could have focused on the Clippers last night, you know what I’m saying. It is what it is. It’s a loss, they outplayed us in every way, shape, or form.

Is this a better Clipper team than what you saw earlier in the first game of the season, second game of the season. Have you seen improvements in their game?

I’m not really that focused on them. They beat us the first time and they beat us tonight. Obviously, they’re playing well right now, like I say, they got a deep team and they well coached, but you know it’s an 82-game season, man. You want to play well at the end, so we’ll see what happens when April and May come around.

Is this the kind of game that you’re like, you said it’s one of 82 and you wash it and move on or is it one that will linger because it was kind of embarrassing?

No, man. We got to learn from it, for sure. We can’t act like it didn’t happen. We got embarrassed tonight, but one good thing about the NBA, we got—what’s today? What’s today? Wednesday? We got another one on Friday. You don’t know the days either. Yeah, we got another one on Friday, so we’ll get the bad taste out our mouth.

Damian Lillard

We got our ass whooped. I think it was pretty self-explanatory.

What made their defense so tough?

They had a lot of energy. They played fresh. You know, they just wanted it more than we did from the jump. They pounded us on the glass, they defended hard, they played good team defense. We didn’t take anything away from them. When we played defense, they did what they wanted to do and we didn’t have a great night. They came out and, like I said, they did what they had to do. They handled us.

Do you take anything away from this, or is it just one of those nights?

I mean, there’s a lot of things we could take away from it. We can go watch film and we can pick apart every single thing we did wrong, but then it’s also just one of those games. We weren’t making shots, we didn’t execute well. That kind of sparked their energy. We weren’t making shots and one pass and a shot, no pass and a shot, you know, not making them have to guard.

They got a stop, they was going the other way with energy and the crowd got into it, the bench got into it, and they started feeling good about themselves. It was a route. We pretty much lost control of the game. They’re a good team. They’ve been playing well and they pretty much just came out and handed it to us.

You knew what a good team they were. Is it upsetting that your team didn’t step up to the challenge?

It happens, you know. It’s a tough league to play in. When you come and you don’t play the way you need to play against any team in the league, this can happen. Let alone against a good team. They defended well, they executed well. We didn’t make it hard on them at all. Offensively, they passed the ball around free and easy, comfortable; ball in the paint, they laid it up comfortable, got rebounds.

Us, as guards, we didn’t come back and help. The bigs got they hands full with Blake (Griffin) and DeAndre (Jordan) out there. You know, they contest a shot or try to box them out and then we don’t come back and get it and they end up getting it and get fouled, going to the line, throwing it out for threes. We did a lot of things wrong. We didn’t do things well enough and the score showed that.

Dame, is this the best you’ve seen a Clipper team play?

They looked good. It’s early in the season and I’ve seen a few games they’ve played. Against the Spurs they played really well. I watched the last game against Phoenix they played well—Detroit—they’ve been playing really well, so the way we came into this game and the fact that they’ve been kind of on a run, just kind of beating up on teams, we didn’t bring it and it’s no excuses.