While the Portland Trail Blazers’ barnburner Wednesday against the New York Knicks amounted to a moral victory within a close loss, Sunday’s home matinee against the Toronto Raptors was the opposite: a moral loss enclosed in a narrow 105-102 victory.
With several key players on the Raptors (now 24-43) in street clothes, the Blazers got a favorable matchup against Scottie Barnes, Jakob Poeltl and a cast of fringe NBA players. The Blazers responded by seemingly tossing and turning for much of the afternoon about whether they wanted to take care of business or not.
Portland got off to a dreadful start, falling behind 22-6 in the opening six minutes. The Blazers offense was out of sync and inaccurate, failing to string together consecutive makes until midway through the second quarter. By halftime, the Blazers had recovered and tied it up. The betting man probably would’ve wagered they’d cruise to the win after settling in. Then the Blazers came out of the locker room flat a second time and fell behind by double-digits again.
“I always want us to hit first, but we didn’t and that’s what happens,” Portland head coach Chauncey Billups said. “When you get hit, you start retreating. They keep going, they keep getting aggressive, getting aggressive, more aggressive, more aggressive. Now you’re in a tough spot.”
After the anemic start to both halves, the Blazers were indeed in a tough spot in the fourth quarter. To their credit, the Blazers hung in the fight, but they also got some clear help from the opposition. In case you assumed Toronto’s laundry list of injuries was its only tanking strategy, here comes the part in the game that the headline referred to as “aggressively tanking.” With 8:41 left in the game, Toronto took out Barnes — its best player — and never put him back in the game. Then with 5:22 remaining and the Raptors clinging to a six-point lead, they took out their second-best available player in Poeltl, ending his night in an act of self-sabotage.
For a long time, the Unwritten Code of Tanking had declared that coaches and players don’t intentionally lose, front offices take care of that with roster decisions and shutting players down — something Portland is all too familiar with in recent seasons. However, with the NBA recently going on an Elliot Ness-like crusade to prohibit that sort of thing, apparently there is no more honor among thieves. Methods of tanking are adapting, and Toronto was content to say the quiet part out loud on Sunday as it remains in the race for top-five lottery odds. Hey, sometimes you have to just tip your hat to a well-executed loss, especially in this hostile climate and when the Draft Lottery standings are so razor-thin. The Raptors snuck that loss through a web of red-laser sensors like Danny Ocean pulling off a heist at a Las Vegas casino.
And even then, it was barely enough. Against the likes of Orlando Robinson, Colin Castleton, and Jamison Battle, the Blazers rallied down the stretch and made just enough winning plays to squeak out the three-point win. The game cast doubt on the Blazers’ play-in legitimacy while simultaneously pushing them ever closer to that 10th seed. Still, Portland was happy to take the money and run.
“A win is a win, no matter how they come, no matter who the team is, so we’re always going to accept a win,” said Portland guard Anfernee Simons, who scored a team-high 22 points. “Obviously, there’s some stuff that we’re gonna look back on and see what we could’ve done better, but that’s with any team, so I would just take the win.”
In an otherwise uninspiring team performance, the objectively feel-good storyline of Sunday’s win was Portland wing Matisse Thybulle. After missing 67 games due to injury, Thybulle made his season debut, checking in at the 2:51 mark of the third quarter to a warm reception from the Moda Center crowd.
“That was pretty cool, honestly. It was really, really cool,” Thybulle said about the crowd’s response to him checking in for the first time. “ ... To be able to come back just in sparing minutes, but people be that excited about it was a good feeling.”
The defensive specialist played just six minutes, but he immediately provided a burst to a Blazers team that needed energy. Thybulle’s first shift overlapped with a 10-0 Blazers run that got them back within striking distance. Thybulle posted back-to-back steals during the run that translated into five Portland points. On the first steal, he swarmed Castleton to deflect a pass high in the air before he intercepted it. Then for the second steal, Thybulle picked Barnes’ pocket from behind with enough force to send the ball off the backboard and into a teammate’s hands.
“My head was spinning a bit, I got tired a lot faster than I was expecting,” Thybulle said. “But I felt like I fit in well. I felt like I was able to contribute early which was something I was hoping to be able to do.”
Thybulle’s second shift lasted just 5.5 seconds, but it included the decisive play of the game. With Portland holding onto a three-point lead and needing one more stop, Billups subbed Thybulle back in. Thybulle responded by tracking down a seemingly open Robinson and blocking the center’s 3-point shot from behind at the buzzer. The ball landed in Thybulle’s hands, giving him the chance to throw it down the court as the red lights flashed. He wore a big grin as teammates ran out to congratulate him.
Toronto Raptors v Portland Trail Blazers Photo by Soobum Im/Getty Images
“It couldn’t have ended any better than with him coming from 30 feet away from the play to get a blocked shot,” Billups said. “I’ve never seen anything like him, in terms of his closing speed to get blocked shots.”
In the postgame locker room, Thybulle admitted he made a mistake that initially put him out of position on the game-winning play. He also playfully casted some of the blame for the mishap to Blazers forward Toumani Camara.
“In my defense, Toumani was supposed to tell everybody to switch on contact, but he didn’t tell me, so I didn’t get the memo and messed it up,” said Thybulle, laughing a little and projecting his voice so Camara could hear him from across the locker room. “Luckily, we saved the day.”
Thybulle classified his debut performance as a “thank God it worked” type of night. That first steal happened on a play he went rogue, he said. That final block came after a mistake and required an impressive long-distance recovery. Thybulle had planned on playing it safe and by the book for his first game back. It seems his instincts had other ideas.
“When you come back after like 68 games and not playing, you want to just be solid and do your job right,” he said. “But I guess I couldn’t help myself.”