It was yet another impressive win at home for the Blazers on Sunday night. They held off a strong comeback bid in the second half and took down the highly regarded Boston Celtics, 100-94. Former Blazers teams might have crumbled under the multi-dimensional attack of the talented Celtics, but not this season. Jusuf Nurkic and Damian Lillard both notched double-doubles and Al-Farouq Aminu hit big shots down the stretch. Lillard and Nurkic seemed especially in sync on this night. Maybe it was because they strolled into pre-game warm-ups together with Lillard's new baby in tow. Team bonding!
Like Golden State and the Lakers, the Celtics are one of those teams that attracts a lot of "away" fans to the Moda Center. The place was filled with green jerseys cheering obnoxiously each time Kyrie Erving or Jason Tatum scored. Luckily that didn't happen too often in the first half. The Celtics looked sluggish from their long 10 day road trip while the Blazers seemed cozy and warm, enjoying the final night of a 6 game home stand. I wondered if Evan Turner, who has been having a great season, would be especially motivated to play against his old team. He didn't hit many shots, but played tenacious defense. Here he is "telling Kyrie that he made a great choice with his jersey number."
The score was 54-37 at the break, a low scoring affair for a usually high scoring Boston team. Let's check out some of the fans present at this game, shall we?
These two appeared to be getting along despite their split alliances. As noted earlier, there were tons of Celtics fans in the house:
No confusion about who these two were rooting for:
This guy used to come to every game, but now he's only at a select few. He's upped his faceprint game though:
Rocking the Blazer gear properly:
It was "Military Appreciation Night." These two are members of the ROTC from Prairie High in Vancouver, WA and they were the official color guard, bringing out the flag for the anthem at the start of the game.
The folks from DSA were outside the arena, by the way, keeping up the #NoLeupold protest actions started the previous game..
Don’t have any in game stunts planned for tonight’s game (or do we....). But we’ll be outside letting people know that the @trailblazers being in partnership with war profiteers complicit in upholding apartheid is unacceptable. #NoLeupold pic.twitter.com/2uPuI3pHU6
— DSA Portland Oregon (@PortlandDSA) November 12, 2018
Back inside the arena there was a weird delay during halftime as they had to readjust the backboard after a particularly raucous Nurkic dunk during the warm-ups. Watching the precision with which they measured the hoop's height and angle I was surprised this doesn't happen more often:
The third quarter saw the Celtics mount a quick comeback, closing the gap to 6 at some points. This wasn't a huge surprise, but what was nice to see was the Blazers maintaining their composure and holding off the charge. Once again the bench players proved critical. Meyers Leonard (fingers crossed) has put together a nice string of effective games, and Seth Curry got into the action, draining two sweet three-pointers.
The Blazers carried a 13 point lead going into the final quarter, but that was soon erased as Boston found their three-point shooting touch and tied the game with 7 minutes to go. This time is was Al-Farouq Aminu who stepped up to hit the bog shots. He hit two devastating three pointers in the final minutes to seal the game and help the Blazers come away with another statement victory. The Blazers now hold second place in the competitive Western conference with a not-too-shabby 10-3 record. They head out on the road now for a series of big test games. First up, the LA Lakers on Wednesday night—a win they need if they want to establish themselves as a true threat in the West.