It \u2018s almost Christmas and the Portland Trail Blazers got a gift tonight, edging out the Sacramento Kings 134-133 in overtime. The victory came courtesy of a call in the last second that allowed Deni Avdija to sink free throws, turning a single-point loss into a single-point win.<\/p>\n
This was the first time the Blazers have posted back-to-back wins since the last day in October, and they have 35 points from Avdija to thank for it. The top scorer for the Kings was DeMar DeRozan with 33 points, but that wasn\u2019t quite enough to stop history from repeating itself this time around.<\/p>\n
Deni turned in another quiet night on the job\u201335 points, 5 rebounds and 5 assists. Is this what an All-Star looks like? His numbers keep occurring all the time. Meanwhile, hats off to DeRozan, who put the game into overtime with a three and dominated the court during Sacramento\u2019s stretch run, carving right through a late Portland lead like it didn\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n
Free throws turned out to be the difference tonight\u2013both made and missed. The Blazers missed enough to bobble the game in regulation, but Deni made a pair with 1.5 seconds remaining in OT to finish the job. The Blazers were 21 of 33 and the Kings went 31 of 34.<\/p>\n
The Shaedon Sharpe Show is clearly on an extended run. He hit 8 of 9 shots in the first half for 20 points to lead the Blazers to a 63-60 advantage at the break. The second half was more of a struggle for him, but by then Deni was up to speed and the Blazers prevailed. Bottom line? This double-punch attack in Portland is some serious business.<\/p>\n
Jerami Grant struggled scoring points tonight, but he came up with several other plays that made a difference. He finished with 9 rebounds and 5 assists to go with his 20 points.<\/p>\n
The Kings outran the Blazers for the first three quarters, pouring in 14 fastbreak points while their hosts managed only 2. This advantage disappeared in the final frame, and the Blazers rode the change to the victory\u2013just barely.<\/p>\n
Apparently this was National Twin Day, one highlight of which was Blazers Kris Murray blocking a shot by his twin brother Keegan in the first half. As usual, starter Keegan won the individual faceoff with his reserve sibling, but Kris chipped in with 5 huge points in overtime and got the team victory .<\/p>\n
The Blazers roll on down to Sacramento for a rematch with the Kings on Saturday. Game time is 7 pm, PST.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It \u2018s almost Christmas and the Portland Trail Blazers got a gift tonight, edging out the Sacramento Kings…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":357947,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,89844,134466,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-357946","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basketball","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-blazers-gameday-coverage","12":"tag-instant-recaps","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357946\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/357947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}