Now that the All-Star break is over, the Portland Trail Blazers start the stretch run of the NBA season with a road back-to-back that starts Friday night in Salt Lake City versus the Jazz. Tipoff is scheduled for 6 p.m.
While they didn’t play as well as they would have liked, particularly early on at home, in the unofficial first half of the season, the Trail Blazers are nonetheless tied with the Denver Nuggets for sixth-place in the Western Conference standings with a 32-6 record with 24 games to play. Considering they were in 10th-place and 10 games under .500 at this point last year, they have to feel good about their chances of making the postseason for a fifth consecutive season.
“With it still being so tight, every game is important,” said Trail Blazers point guard Damian Lillard, who scored 21 points to lead “Team Stephen” at the 2018 NBA All-Star Game. “Any little thing could make your season go in the right or wrong direction, so we’ve just got to focus on us and keep our minds focused on the right things.”
What’s more, Portland is just a half game behind Oklahoma City for fifth, 1.5 games behind Minnesota for fourth and 2.5 games behind San Antonio in third, so if they could string together a few wins in the final two months of the season, the Trail Blazers could find themselves with home-court advantage come playoffs.
Then again, they’re also just a half game up on the eighth-place Pelicans, 1.0 games up on the ninth-place Clippers and 2.0 games up on the 10th-place Jazz, their opponent Friday night and a team that has won 11 in a row, so there’s little-to-no room for error as they enter the second half of the season.
“I can’t remember a race this tight this deep into the season,” said Trail Blazers head coach Terry Stotts. “There are always some playoff races but when you have six or seven teams within a couple games, that’s really something. It’s going to be exciting.”
Especially if Lillard starts the second half of the season in a similar fashion to the way he ended the first. The 6-3 guard in his sixth season out of Weber State is averaging 32.0 points on 48 percent shooting, 6.7 assists, 3.6 rebounds and 1.1 steals in February and scored 50, 39 and 44 points in the last three games before the All-Star break.
“I felt I was doing what was needed,” said Lillard. “Going into the break it was huge for us to try to get those wins because of how tight the race is in the West. Now we’ve got to take it home. I don’t see my mentality changing for the rest of this season.”
Friday’s game will be the third of four meetings between the two teams, with the Jazz taking the first two contests. The Trail Blazers led by a point going after the first half of the most recent meeting on Feb. 11 at the Moda Center, but were outscored 38-19 in the third quarter on the way to losing 115-96.
Jazz Rookie Donovan Mitchell went for 27 points with Joe Ingles added a career-high 24 and both Derrick Favors (15 points, 11 rebounds) and Rudy Gobert (12 points, 11 rebounds) pitched in double-doubles in the winning effort.
"We know that we’re capable of going in there and getting a win," said Lillard, who had a potential game-winning attempt blocked in the first loss to Utah this season. "It’s just a matter of us going in there and doing all the things for 48 minutes to do that."
Friday night’s game can be seen locally on NBC Sports Northwest with Kevin Calabro, Lamar Hurd and Brooke Olzendam. Scott Lynn, filling in for Brian Wheeler, will have the call on Rip City Radio 620 AM.