Trail Blazers Bounce Back From Heartbreaker, Pick Up First Win of the Season

📍PORTLAND, Ore. — On Friday, the Trail Blazers led the Pelicans by 10 at halftime, gave up that lead in the fourth quarter and lost on a last-second shot by Brandon Ingram.

Coming into the two-game “baseball series” with New Orleans, on the heels of their season-opening blowout loss to Golden State, I figured they’d get one of the two games against the Pelicans before heading out on their first road trip of the season.

After they lost a heartbreaker in the first game, I figured that would count as the “win” on this opening homestand and the Pelicans would clean some things up in the second game and handle business like a playoff team should against a clear lottery team like Portland.

That did not happen.

I asked Anfernee Simons—who broke out of his slump with 27 points—if he thought this team would have rebounded like this after losing like that last season.

“Honestly, I don’t think so,” he said. “This year, we’ve got more camaraderie. We’ve got guys coming back, we know each other a little bit more. It’s easier to talk to each other and give each other pep talks. Going into the third quarter, we huddled up and said, ‘This is the time to increase the lead and make it harder for them to come back.’ We knew that’s what we messed up last game. We did that and we executed it perfectly.”

Many of the things that worked in the first game against the Pelicans carried over. Donovan Clingan and Toumani Camara continued to defend Zion Williamson well, holding him to 3-of-12 shooting. Jerami Grant had another big scoring night (28 points). Sunday, they won the rebounding battle more decisively than they did on Friday, with a 51-39 edge.

“I really liked our resolve, man,” Billups said. “That was a tough loss for us the other night. I felt like we played good enough to win. With a young ballclub, you’re always hoping you respond the right way. So I loved the way we came back.”

All of the things the Blazers talked about in training camp, wanting to be fun to watch and hard to play against, were there in these two games against the Pelicans.

“Our standard is always that we’re going to compete as hard as we can every time and live with the results,” Billups said.