Blazers Fall To Suns In Final Seconds Despite Damian Lillard's Epic Fourth Quarter

Damian Lillard tried his best, but couldn't quite will Portland to clinching a playoff berth against Phoenix.

Jack Winter

Blazers Fall To Suns In Final Seconds Despite Damian Lillard's Epic Fourth Quarter
Blazers Fall To Suns In Final Seconds Despite Damian Lillard's Epic Fourth Quarter /

Notes, analysis, observations, clips and more from the Trail Blazers' thrilling 118-117 loss to the Phoenix Suns.

  • Damian Lillard, with the whole league watching, won MVP votes on Thursday. He did almost everything, literally, he could in the fourth quarter to will his team to victory, clinching Portland no worse than sixth – and most importantly, avoiding the play-in tournament – in the Western Conference. His 24 points during the final stanza came on nine consecutive made shots, all but two of them right at the basket, a telling testament to Lillard's unstoppable burst off the dribble all night long. His final score, a straight one-on-one blow-by of All-Defense candidate Mikal Bridges for a layup, put the Blazers up three with 35 seconds left, and should have been the cherry on top of an instant-classic performance. The basketball gods, obviously, had other plans, but don't let Portland's stinging loss take away from the unbelievable level Lillard reached when his team needed him most. Making his 41-point masterpiece even more awe-inspiring? Lillard, hounded by a Suns defense hellbent on stopping him, didn't score his first points of the third quarter until its final possession. He waved off his normal rest period early in the fourth, too, perhaps knowing the heroics soon to come. Epic.
  • Norman Powell definitely committed a foul on the call that netted Devin Booker's go-ahead free throws just before the final buzzer. His hand made clear contact with Booker's shooting arm, affecting the latter's gather and release as he attempted a fading, falling 17-footer – on a night the Suns star shot 5-of-17 from the field. It was a bad foul by Powell, basically, and that seemed obvious enough in real time. Challenging the whistle still would have made sense for Terry Stotts if Portland had two timeouts. But with just one left and so little time on the game clock, a much more prudent option than calling for a near-hopeless challenge would have been using that last timeout to advance the ball to halfcourt. Instead, Stotts rung the challenge bell, with video immediately confirming what even most Blazers partisans already knew. Inbounding the ball from halfcourt for a game-winning try would have been even more advantageous after the officials corrected time on the clock to 2.4 seconds. Is there much doubt Lillard, or maybe just as likely the threat of him, would have produced a good look for Portland at the buzzer? Stotts bungled this one, and if Powell didn't cop to touching Booker while the Blazers debated their approach, he's definitely at fault, too.
  • Portland wasn't very good defensively on Thursday – no surprise considering it was the second night of a road back-to-back against teams with the two best records in basketball. Bouts of lethargy were inevitable, and the Blazers indeed fell victim to them throughout the game. But with a playoff spot on the line against upper-tier competition, there's just no excuse for some of the schematic mistakes Portland made defensively. Every team in the NBA runs the "Spain" or "stack" pick-and-roll; the eye test suggests Monty Williams and Chris Paul rely on it more than anyone. The Blazers even saw it a few times versus the Utah Jazz, eventually snuffing out Spain easily after first failing to stop it. Just like Carmelo Anthony – exploited on defense all night – forgot to auto switch on a ball screen when Portland went small early in the fourth quarter, though, Portland was inexplicably left confused by Spain on multiple possessions. The Blazers don't have the defensive talent to survive those errors when facing quality competition. Their major improvement on that end of late, as much as it's owed to Nurkic, is still due in large part to the little things, like mitigating unforced errors and focusing on the details. Portland, with massive postseason implications at stake, didn't do enough of either against the Suns.
  • Phoenix is a solid defensive rebounding team, and made a concerted effort to put bodies on Nurkic and Enes Kanter as shots went up. One offensive rebound for the Blazers, from Kanter, wouldn't even have been as big an issue if the Suns didn't pull down 10 of their own misses – outscoring Portland by a whopping 13 points in second-chance opportunities. Making that discrepancy all the more surprising is that Deandre Ayton, fighting left knee soreness, was a late scratch. The combination of fatigue from the Blazers and the Suns subsisting on jumpers, yielding long rebounds, perhaps explains it. Either way, Portland losing the offensive rebound battle so substantially loomed large.
  • It'd be a crime to dismiss the Point God, who came damn close to matching Lillard's dominant fourth quarter. Paul tormented the Blazers on switches, targeting Anthony over and over in the fourth quarter before splashing pull-up twos and creating efficient looks for his teammates. His 26 points and seven assists on 11-of-14 shooting – with one turnover, of course – are even more impressive considering Booker's struggles and Ayton's absence. Paul, like all of his teammates, proved helpless keeping Lillard out of the paint late, tasting his own medicine while being sought out in ball-screen action. But his offensive brilliance kept Phoenix in it just long enough for the clock to run out on Lillard's explosion, and keep the Suns' hopes of earning the one seed alive.
  • C.J. McCollum let Lillard cook in the fourth, but otherwise put on the type of shot-making display that reminds of why he's capable of reaching another level in the postseason. There's just nothing a defender can do when McCollum puts them in the blender, stopping short, stepping back and rising up for ridiculous off-dribble jumpers. Poor Jevon Carter, in the league primarily because of his individual defense, just had no chance here. At least he won't be the last to feel McCollum's wrath of one-on-one offense when the stakes are highest.

Next up: home vs. Denver Nuggets on Sunday, 6:00 p.m. (PST)

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Jack Winter
JACK WINTER

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