The Portland Trail Blazers and Detroit Pistons played a barn-burner on Sunday evening. If barns were burned by missed threes, that is. After building an 18-point lead in the second half, the Pistons succumbed to a big offensive run by Anfernee Simons, aided somewhat by prior scoring from Jerami Grant that kept the game in reach. Portland cut the lead down to three in the final minute, but most of their non-Simons shots were coming from outside. They couldn’t hit the deep shot late, or for most of the game. The Blazers went 15-50, 30% behind the arc, the Pistons 9-28, 32.1%. The difference was, Detroit had enough inside scoring to make up for it in a 119-112 Pistons victory.
Simons finished the game with 34 points, Grant with 25.
Blazer of the Game
With misgivings, it’s Anfernee Simons. The story with him, and the team really, was the same as it has been for the last couple weeks. Portland did not play good defense. Simons became a frequent target of opponent attacks. He didn’t have enough help around him to keep him from being exposed.
That put a ton of pressure on Portland’s offense. As usual, Ant was the guy who delivered. He shot 14-26 from the field on his way to those 34 points. He’s the only Blazer who can score enough to win a game with offense. By gum, he tried—and largely delivered—tonight.
Stat of the Night
The Blazers got destroyed in the paint tonight. With a minute left in the third quarter, they had tallied only 14 points inside against 40 for Detroit. Anfernee Simons went on a heater to add 4 to the total before the buzzer sounded on the period, but that still left Portland on the wrong side of a double-up in the lane. The Pistons decided to take away dribble penetration at all costs. The Blazers coughed up the ball, stalled on drives, and passed out for threes instead. They couldn’t hit enough of the latter to make up for the former.
The final tally in the paint was 50 Detroit, 30 Portland.
Honorable Mention: Down three points in the last 90 seconds of the game, the Blazers missed three open threes in a row before the margin got out of reach.
What We’ll Remember
Honestly? The holes in Portland’s roster. The Blazers miss Deni Avdija so bad on perimeter defense. All the Pistons had to do was stay away from Toumani Camara and they had a red-carpet walkway into the lane on penetration. Poor Donovan Clingan was left deciding whether to stay with his man or cover the suddenly-loose driver. When he did the former, Detroit scored unopposed. When he did the latter, Clingan’s man just scooped up the rebound on the miss and put it in unopposed. You can find the commonality between those two sentences fairly easily.
On offense, the lack of a real point guard showed up drastically in the starting lineup. Simons mustered mostly iso shots. Shaedon Sharpe stalled or turned over the ball when he tried to initiate. Whipping the rock around the perimeter became Portland’s only steady passing opportunity. It wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t enough.
Up Next
Boxscore
The Blazers draw the New York Knicks Wednesday night with a 7:00 PM, Pacific start.