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Game 25 vs. DEN: Winning performances, but not a winning show

The headline says it all: Portland lost this game. You can say that Denver won it; that's true too. The final tally was 121-120, after Jerami Grant got caught out of position on a corner three from Jamal Murray.

There was a lot more to the game than the last shot, though.

Recaps

Offense

For their part, the Blazers played a lot of iso ball, especially during the second half. With so much work being done in transition, and with as many as three lights-out shooters on the floor, it was an easy choice to make.

When the Blazers did run offensive plays by the book successfully, the result was usually a shot off of the high pick-and-roll, or a quick pass out of a doubleteam in the low post.

It's not really possible to overstate the virtue of the Blazers' burgeoning transition game, either. They picked up tonight where they left off with Indiana, keeping bodies moving along with the ball as quickly as possible, the better to prevent the likes of Nikola Jokic and Aaron Gordon from reading the play in time enough to do anything about it.

Damian Lillard not only presented an ongoing scoring threat from the beginning to the end of his playing time, but he also dished out 12 assists.

Getting around defenses isn't a problem for the Blazers; the problem is getting stops when they need them.

Denver conducted their offense essentially as the previous analysis predicted: forcing the Blazers to pick their poison by running Jokic on the right side of the post, and Gordon on the left, making available a steady diet of short passes from one to the other for a raise and a score. When opportunities arose, or when things got too hairy in the low post, Denver would get the ball into the hands of operators like Bones Hyland and Jamal Murray beyond the three point line, where the Nuggets connected on 40% of their attempts. The only reason the Blazers were in the game despite such ineffective—not always poor—defense against deep shots was because their own three-ball was just as solid, and on more attempts. The game went best for the Blazers when they were able to force Denver into answering threes with anything other than three pointers of their own.

Defense

Portland's defense appeared to live by one watchword: disrupt, disrupt, disrupt. Do not give the other guys anything like what they're expecting. So where the Blazers have made the 2-3 zone their bread and butter, building an obstacle course for their opponents, in this game they were putting more energy into putting themselves between the ball and the basket, getting into passing lanes, and letting plans take care of themselves.

Between this approach to defense and the transition-driven, iso-heavy offense, this should have been a terrific night for individual performances. The Blazers generated a lot of Denver turnovers, but that wasn't nearly enough to cancel out Denver's rebounding advantage.

Adding insult to injury, the officials seemed a great deal more interested in creating foul trouble for Portland than for Denver. Aaron Gordon was the only Denver player to get within shouting distance of foul trouble, while Jusuf Nurkic, Anfernee Simons, and Jerami Grant all got nailed on 50-50 calls—or tickytack—that were rarely called the same at both ends, and assuredly destructive to Portland's momentum.

For their part, the Nuggets made it a point to stay close. The Blazers had a hard time coming by uncontested shots, instead setting a lot of picks for Dame and laboring mightily under the basket for second chances.

The constant bother, along with the fouls, was enough to set off Denver runs when Denver needed them most.

How Denver won

  • Like most other teams to get the better of the Blazers this season, Denver did everything in its power to maximize its advantages of length and height—enough, in fact, to overcome the turnover differential.
  • Bones Hyland. (That dude is scary.)
  • Denver's reserve lineups knew their passing lanes, and put them to good use.
  • Getting Nurk and Ant into foul trouble was huge. All efforts by the Blazers to stay in front of their assignments and keep their arms up were on the whole unimpressive, as far as the officials were concerned.
  • With the bodies lining up the way they did, Gordon had space to operate when Jokic didn't, and vice versa.
  • The sharper Denver's screens, the more likely they were to get stops. That's how the game turned into a footrace late.

How Portland lost

  • Anfernee Simons needed to be a viable outside scoring threat, but never got himself going. (…Props to Denver's defense, they learned from the previous humiliation.)
  • The Blazers gave plenty of help on Jokic, but otherwise made no effort to shut down any single player. Cut the production of any major contributor in half, and the Blazers win the game (as long as they're not leaving Jokic completely open as a result).
  • Drew Eubanks—largely through no fault of his own—was forced to wander all over the halfcourt on defense. It didn't take long for him to get chewed up by frustration, but to his credit he kept working at it. Whatever the Blazers meant to do by way of recovering from screens, didn't work.

The Minnesota Timberwolves come to Portland for a weekend doubleheader. Karl-Anthony Towns is injured, but Rudy Gobert is not. Count on the Blazers to lean hard into the three-ball, and double down on the disruption strategy they employed to such good effect tonight.

The broadcast of Game 26 begins at 7 p.m. PST on Saturday night.