Trail Blazers Out-Executed in Vintage Damian Lillard-Jamal Murray Duel

PORTLAND, Ore. — I haven't seen Chauncey Billups upset too many times this season.

This time a year ago? It was nightly. Those were the days when the first-year head coach would be calling out the Trail Blazers' effort nightly as the double-digit losses piled up. There have been a few bad losses and winnable games Portland has dropped this season, but it hasn't generally gotten to that place.

After Jamal Murray knocked down a go-ahead three-pointer with less than a second remaining on Thursday was the most upset Billups has been after a game.

"It wasn't handled well at all," Billups said. "We're up two. The last shot you can give up is a three. A two doesn't beat us. We're going to overtime. No big deal. We gave up a three-point shot. It was terrible."

Murray's shot was the culmination of a final stretch fitting of the 2019 Blazers-Nuggets second-round playoff series, with Lillard and Murray trading haymakers. There were 15 lead changes in the final six and a half minutes of the fourth quarter after Murray sparked a Denver run to erase an 11-point Blazers lead.

"There are things we can control that we had slippage in, and they took advantage of it," Lillard said. "When a pick-and-roll was happening, we had to be pulled over. We'd be coming over late and sometimes they would get it, or sometimes there would be a foul and they'd see us trailing the play, and then it was a skip to the other side, and we were just behind the play too many times."

Nikola Jokic had a typical Nikola Jokic game—a light 33 points, 10 rebounds and nine assists—but Thursday was a reminder that the Nuggets have an end-of-game shotmaker every bit the threat Lillard is. Just like with Lillard missing most of last year, it was easy to forget going into the season after Murray sat out all of the 2021-22 season rehabbing a torn ACL. But go back to the 2020 bubble and remember those playoff battles with Donovan Mitchell. That's the Murray that showed up in the fourth quarter on Thursday to make the Blazers pay for little lapses in execution down the stretch.

"He hit a tough shot, and we still had a chance," Lillard said. "He hit a tough shot to win it, but there were other things we could have done before to not be in that situation."

I thought something Lillard said after the game about consistency was illuminating. He's in a unique position in his career where he's now the elder statesman in a mostly very young group. In fact, he's the only player older than 30. Thus far, he's been enjoying it and relishing having Anfernee Simons and Jerami Grant to share the scoring load. But none of these guys (other than Grant, who was on that Nuggets team in the bubble with Murray) have extensive experience executing in meaningful games. This was not a playoff game, it was a regular-season game in December, but Lillard drew on his first big playoff experience back in 2014. Everyone remembers the career-defining shot to win the first-round series against Houston; not many talk about the buzzsaw the Blazers ran into in the second round in the eventual champion Spurs.

Lillard still thinks about it, and it was a reminder of what everyone knows: the Blazers are not yet where they need to be.

"The experienced, really good teams, even when they're not playing great, they still have a medium where it's solid basketball," Lillard said. "Everybody thinks about the Spurs when I first got in the league. They're not doing nothing special. But they're cutting hard every time and screening. They're making you work. So the execution is still there with everything they did and it kind of kept the level high enough to where they didn't struggle. It takes a mature, experienced team to be that way. Right now, we've got a lot of youth and not a lot of experience being in the mix and being the person that has to do the job. And we're getting better at it, but it takes time to become that type of team."

What We Saw

For paid subscribers, notes, thoughts and observations from the game, plus the Jersey of the Night:

• Billups began his pregame press conference by commenting on this morning's news that WNBA star Brittney Griner has been released after 10 months spent as a political prisoner in Russia. Here's what he said, in full: “Today is obviously a very good day in the NBA. I woke up with a big smile on my face today with the news that Brittney Griner is being freed. A lot of people put in a lot of contributions to make that happen. We’re all very thankful about that. I mainly want to give a big shout-out to the WNBA, to be honest with you. They’ve been very loud every single day. They didn’t let one day go by without screaming, standing on top of the tables, and saying ‘Free B.G.’ And they finally got it done. My prayers are with her that she comes back and hopefully, she’s able to heal physically, mentally, emotionally. We’re all with her. I just wanted to start off by saying that. I’m very thankful about that.”
• Griner's release was also acknowledged on the video board during the first quarter and got a good cheer from the crowd.

• It was good to see Nassir Little around the team and in relatively good spirits given he's out for the next six weeks with a hip fracture. He's on crutches, but not for much longer. He seemed pretty upbeat that the injury could have been a lot worse than it was.
• Keon Johnson returned after missing 14 games with a hip pointer. He played less than a minute, at the end of the first quarter, but knocked down a pull-up three to close the quarter out. It will likely take time to get him worked back into the rotation after being out a whole month, but having another playable guard to take some ballhandling responsibility away from Lillard and Anfernee Simons will help this team immensely.
• A couple of different times tonight, Billups shared a laugh on the sidelines with his former Clippers teammate DeAndre Jordan. There aren't too many guys left in the league who actually played with Billups. He talked a bit last season after the trade deadline about the weirdness of coaching Eric Bledsoe, whom he mentored very early in his career when Billups was on the Clippers.
• Your nightly ridiculous Shaedon Sharpe highlight.
• Drew Eubanks knocked down a wide-open three at the top of the key. It was his first three-point make of the year and ninth of his career.
• If Portland had won this game, I was going to lead with Jusuf Nurkic, who had by far his best and most impactful performance of the season at both ends of the floor. Minus a bad foul followed by a technical for throwing the ball into the stands, the Blazers couldn't have gotten a better effort from Nurkic, who always gets up to play against his former team and the player that relegated him to the bench back in those days. Jokic got his, but Nurkic did a great job on him defensively and mostly played within himself on offense. If he played like this every night, he wouldn't be as polarizing as he is.

Jersey of the Night