The Golden State Warriors (48-4), the league’s top scoring team, will challenge the Portland Trail Blazers (27-27) at the Moda Center.
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The Portland Trailblazers now hold the 7th seed in the Western Conference being just half a game behind the Dallas Mavericks for the 6th seed.
Favors paced the Jazz with 22 points and eight rebounds.
Tobias Harris scored 21 points on 9-of-12 shooting in his Detroit debut, three days after the Pistons acquired the forward from Orlando.
Utah lost for the third time in four games and is in ninth place in the West. Once I see two go in, I know I can get rolling.
“It’s a great feeling”, said Lillard, who is from Oakland, California.
While not knowing whether you’ll play on a nightly basis can be mentally taxing for players, one of Portland’s few advantages as a roster is the variety of styles they can play.
Lillard made a tiebreaking layup with 23.4 seconds left and McCollum hit two foul shots to give Portland a 113-109 lead.
It looks like it could be a similar sort of match this time, with Lillard trying in vain to drag the Blazers over the line, against a Warriors team performance.
“We’re a playoff team”, he said.
Portland got strong contributions from reserves Maurice Harkless and Ed Davis. Portland had jumped the Warriors early, shooting their way to a 19-point lead in the second quarter.
“He was phenomenal”, Warriors coach Steve Kerr said of Lillard. “He’s changing every game for us”.
Portland’s Damian Lillard scored a career-high 51 points to lead the Trail Blazers to a stunningly dominant 137-105 victory over the NBA-leading Golden State Warriors on Friday.
The Trail Blazers have won two of three from the Jazz (27-27) this season and can claim the tiebreaker with a victory in this matchup of teams in contention for a playoff spot separated by one-half game. Curry, who hit 7-of-13 from three-point range, has connected on a three-pointer in 124 consecutive regular-season games overall, second-most in National Basketball Association history behind only Kyle Korver’s streak of 127-straight games from 2012-14… He had six points and 10 rebounds that night. The six-game trip doesn’t get any easier for the Warriors.
The Trail Blazers were firing on all cylinders and saw Lillard catch fire with 17 early points. He added nine free throws in 10 tries. The Hornets had been 0-4 on the road in games Walker played against the Nets, and the NY native was injured past year when Charlotte had a 14-point win in Brooklyn.
Curry could only watch. Jahlil Okafor scored a career-high 31 points for Philadelphia.
The Thunder fell 101-98 to the Pacers on Friday and the Spurs suffered a 105-86 loss to the Clippers on Thursday.
George Hill had nine points and nine assists and matched a career high with 11 rebounds for Indiana.
Raptors 98, Grizzlies 85: TORONTO – DeMar DeRozan scored 21 points, Kyle Lowry added 18 and Toronto won its eighth straight at home. He scored 15 points in the quarter, but Utah took an 82-80 lead into the final period.
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Golden State’s loss to Portland is the worst loss by a defending champ since the Miami Heat lost by 42 points to the Chicago Bulls in ’06.
