Blazers Cruise Past Mavs With Help From Unsung Role Players

The Portland Trail Blazers held on to defeat the Dallas Mavericks 103-109 on Wednesday. Damian Lillard accrued his amazingly usual 27 points, while six other Blazers finished in double figures, including Moe Harkless—who got the start at power forward—and Ed Davis. Harkless and Davis tallied an impressive 30 points between them. CSNNW brings us inside the locker room.

Ed Davis

Getting putbacks, getting [indiscernible], getting easy buckets, so just trying to do whatever I can do just to help the team win.

Ed, particularly on the offensive glass—especially after… I wouldn’t say ‘dominated’ the glass in the last game—but it seemed like their bigs kind of got the best of the team last game. It seems it flipped this time between you and Mason [Plumlee]. It seemed like you guys were kind of able to flip the from last game.

That was on the board for our game plan, was to hit the offensive glass. The fours and the fives, we need to get a lot of second chance points and things like that. So that was one of the focuses coming into the game for us.

[An unholy amount of mic handling noise] not the full…?

Not the full throttle. It was a one armed joint, but you know, I just try to come in, bring energy, get the crowd going, get the bench going, and just do whatever I can do just to help the team win. However that might be.

Have you retired the full throttle flex?

Nah, it’s coming out. I might bring it out tomorrow in L.A., man.

Damian Lillard

Moe was huge for us. Just to start the game, on both ends of the floor with his length and athleticism, he was really active. He disturbed a lot of the things they wanted to do early and then he got out and ran. He got easy baskets and brought energy to the game.

Ed gave us a lot of second chance opportunities. He was a monster on the glass, and in the paint he was finishing a lot of stuff. I thought he got fouled on a lot of them and he was just playing through it. He beasted up tonight.

Also, I thought Mase did a great job at the rim. He [was] as good as he’s been all season tonight at the rim, as far as just protecting it and making guys change shots at the rim, how physical he was. He just had a huge presence on the game tonight.

It seemed like you guys were more concentrated effort defensively. Would you agree?

Definitely. Yesterday, we talked about it. At shoot around this morning, we talked about it. ‘Hey, it’s 11 games left, it’s tightening up. We’re in control of where we want to be. We can finish this thing out the right way, but we got to defend the way we did when we had that great stretch.’ And tonight, we looked like that team. We had a pretty complete game defensively and our strongest third quarter start in a long time.