MIAMI -- The Trail Blazers reached the halfway point of a five-game road trip with a 122-111 wire-to-wire loss to the Miami Heat Sunday night at AmericanAirlines Arena.
"We didn't compete hard enough in the first half," said Trail Blazers head coach Terry Stotts. "They had us on our heels from the outset. We missed some shots and they got the rhythm offensive and we were on our heels the whole first half."
The Trail Blazers are now 15-22 overall and 7-13 on the road this season. Portland has lost six of their last seven games and are 1-2 ion their current trip.
Portland found themselves down by double digits less than five minutes into the game after Meyers Leonard, who spent his first seven season with the Trail Blazers before being traded to Miami last offseason, hit a three to give the Heat a 14-4 lead.
The Blazers, playing without CJ McCollum (upper respirtory illness), managed to get the lead down to six a few possessions later. But thanks to shooting 32 percent from there field and 13 percent from three, along with the Heat making six three-pointers, Portland went into the second quarter trailing 31-19.
Portland would only offer token resistance for the remaining three quarters. A 15-2 run, led by eight consecutive points from Damian Lillard, briefly cut Miami's lead to single digits at 82-73 with 3:20 to play in the third quarter, but that was as close as Portland would get.
"The first half, we pretty much gave them whatever they wanted," said Lillarrd. "Not really a presence on the defensive end and they played comfortable, got good looks, they had fun, had a lot of energy and pretty much everything when their way. The moment we stood out ground and got more aggressive, the game completely changed. I think we just dug ourselves too big of a hole. It's hard to play from 20 points down on another team's floor, especially a good team like them."
Damian Lillard led all scorers with 34 points on 11-of-22 shooting from the field and 6-of-12 shooting from three for 34 points to go with 12 assists, three steals and a rebound in 41 minutes.
Hassan Whiteside put up a double-double of 21 points and 18 rebounds in his first game against his former team.
Anfernee Simons, who got the second-half start after Gary Trent Jr. got the start in place of CJ McCollum, finished with 19 points on 8-of-15 shooting, four rebounds and four assists in 34 minutes.
Carmelo Anthony finished with 11 and Mario Hezonja added 10.
Goran Dragic led the Heat with 29 points in just under 30 minutes off the bench. Bam Adebayo flirted with a triple-double before finishing the game with 20 points, eight rebounds and six assists. Derrick Jones Jr. went for 19.
Meyers Leonard went 4-of-8 from the field and 3-of-7 from three for 11 points to go with nine rebounds and three assists in 23 minutes.
Portland now heads north to face the Raptors in there fourth game of the trip Tuesday night in Toronto. Tipoff is scheduled for 4 p.m.