Trail Blazers Coming Up Just Short as Season's Margin for Error Grows Thinner

PORTLAND, Ore. — Just over five weeks ago, the Trail Blazers were in a similar spot to this one. It didn't go nearly as well this time.

After blowing a 25-point halftime lead to the Lakers in late January that put their season seemingly at a crossroads, they bounced back on the second half of a back-to-back and blew out the Spurs, putting things at least back enough on track that they're still talking about the playoffs as a live issue going into March.

Last night, a similar 23-point collapse at Golden State provided another opportunity to wipe the slate clean 24 hours later in what could only be called a must-win game against a New Orleans team neck-and-neck with them in the standings.

It didn't happen this time—Portland ran out of gas in the fourth quarter to fall to 29-33. The renewed good vibes of the viral airplane rap video followed by Damian Lillard's 71-point game are all gone thanks to two bad losses on back-to-back nights, and with a six-game road trip coming up, the margins are growing thinner by the day.

"I'm at the point now where I'm worried about our games, but I'm watching everybody else seeing who won, who lost," head coach Chauncey Billups said after the game. "We're in that spot. We have a good chance, but we've got to start stacking some wins. It is what it is."

That's what it's going to be the rest of the way. Had the Blazers held on against Golden State on Tuesday night, they could have moved from 11th to eighth in the Western Conference standings. After losing these two games to the Warriors and Pelicans, they're suddenly 12th, a half-game behind a Lakers team that will be without LeBron James indefinitely. If you're invested in the Blazers' playoff hopes, get ready to watch as much standings as you do game action for the final six weeks of the season.

With 20 games remaining, there are two things you can say definitively about the Blazers. One is that as long as Lillard is operating at this level, they can't be completely written off. The other is that nothing else about the roster is consistent or reliable enough to feel good about.

Health is a part of that, and what looked like a minor miracle at tipoff Wednesday turned into another setback. Anfernee Simons returned to the lineup just two weeks after suffering what looked at the time like a serious right ankle sprain in their last game before the All-Star break. Simons didn't do much against the Pelicans, shooting 2-for-9 from the field in 20 minutes, but a little rust is understandable after two weeks on the shelf. Just having him on the floor as another threat to account for would have gone a long way over this stretch to take some pressure off of Lillard to do everything.

But Simons re-injured the ankle in the second half and left the game. This one didn't look as serious as the first one did, and he walked to the locker room on his own. But the medical staff will likely slow-play his return, meaning at least for the immediate future, including this upcoming marathon road trip, the Blazers' plan will be what it's been for the last month: Lillard goes nuts or nothing goes right.

The bigger question mark, health-wise, is Jusuf Nurkic, who has been out since Feb. 2 with a calf injury, leaving the Blazers without anything resembling size in the frontcourt. They've been forced to patch together minutes with Drew Eubanks and Trendon Watford in that spot, both of whom bring things to the table but neither of whom should get the level of responsibility Nurkic does when he's healthy.

Billups said before Wednesday's game that Nurkic is doing more work on the court but still hasn't progressed to full-contact practicing and his timetable for a return has not been determined yet. He hasn't been ruled out for the upcoming road trip, but his return doesn't appear imminent, either. And without him, as the Blazers continue to drop games against other teams in their range of the standings, the opening for them to stay in the postseason mix is closing with each passing day.

At this point, the argument for the Blazers as a playoff team is this: they can win enough to hang around the play-in, and most people would take Lillard over anyone else in a single-elimination game.

That's still what he believes, and that isn't going to change. The bad breaks are starting to add up, though.

"If you look at the standings, and you say, 'Oh, they've got to go to Sacramento, and then they've got to go to Dallas,' they could easily drop those two and we could easily win the next two," Lillard said. "And then we'll forget that we were having this conversation, because then we'll be ninth or eighth. It is frustrating. I came into tonight thinking, we win, we jump them and then we just keep pressing forward, we go into the road trip feeling better. But when you lose, it's like, 'Damn.' We're four games under [.500] now, we're going on a road trip that's not going to be an easy road trip. But I think because of how close the standings are, because all those teams have to bump with each other, it's going to stay that way. We've got to keep going and live with whatever happens after that."

If Simons misses more time, it could be just as detrimental to the Blazers' playoff chances as Nurkic's absence has been. Without the secondary scoring and creating threat, Lillard has to do everything. He's shown this season that he's up to the task of doing just that, but the current version of the Blazers makes it too easy for defenses to load up on him. Over the last two nights since the 71-point explosion, the Warriors and Pelicans have laid the blueprint for slowing Lillard down without a reliable second scorer.

"I'm in really good shape," Lillard said. "Getting to this point, there are what, 20 games left? I don't want to get out there and kill myself every game just to have a result like tonight, but it has to happen. I know that I'm conditioned to do it physically and mentally. It is what it is. I've got to go out and do what I've got to do to put some wins on the board and give us a chance to keep playing."