PORTLAND -- The Portland Trail Blazers lost their third-straight game for the first time this season after falling 106-92 to the Washington Wizards in front of a crowd of 19,241 Tuesday night at the Moda Center. The loss moves the Trail Blazers to 13-11 overall and 7-7 at the Moda Center this season. Portland has lost their last three games at home after winning three-straight on the road. “I don’t think we’re playing well,” said Trail Blazers head coach Terry Stotts. “I think we’ve shown that we can play better with basically the same group of people last year, we know we can play better.”After going into the second quarter trailing by two, the Trail Blazers were outscored 13-0 at the start of the second quarter, resulting in the Wizards taking a 31-22 lead. By time the first half came to a merciful close, Portland had committed 11 turnovers in the second quarter alone, leading to 13 Wizards points.And when the Trail Blazers weren’t turning the ball over, they were missing shots, going just 4-of-15 from the field for 15 points in the second quarter. So between fumbling the ball away repeatedly and missing three-fourths of the shots they attempted, Portland scored just 37, their second-lowest scoring half this season, and trailed by 14 at the intermission thanks in large part to 19 first-half points from Wizards guard Bradley Beal.
Portland managed to go on a few runs in the second half — they went 10-0 early in the third quarter to cut the lead to 61-48 and 15-2 in the fourth quarter to get to within 10 with 4:52 to play in regulation — but never got the game to within single digits. What little momentum they were ever able to wrestle away from the road team was quickly snuffed out, either by a strategically-called timeout or a timely three-pointer from Beal, Kelly Oubre Jr. or Markieff Morris.