The Portland Trail Blazers blew out the Los Angeles Lakers at home 132-113 to make it two straight wins. The Blazers took control of the game early and never looked back as they kept a double-digit buffer throughout the contest.
Portland was led in scoring by Shaedon Sharpe, who finished with 25 points, with both Jerami Grant and Caleb Love contributing 22 points apiece.
The Lakers were led by Marcus Smart’s 25 points. Drew Timme and LeBron James both eclipsed 20 points as well, finishing with 21 points and 20 points respectively.
Here are some key takeaways from the game:
The Blazers and Lakers played a relatively close game for all of nine minutes in the first quarter. After falling behind 23-22, Portland ended the quarter on an 18-4 run to take full control of the game. Caleb Love put in eight points during that three minute stretch, including a pair of three-pointers, to set the tone for the game early.
Jerami Grant also added four points to the run, helping the Blazers win another key battle in the game:
Having a spark plug scorer off the bench is an important part of being able to win the early part of the game. Having two makes a team significantly harder to defend and gameplan against. Grant and Love both scored 22 points off the bench to add to the Portland scoring attack. Their contributions in the first half especially helped the Blazers stay in control throughout the game. At halftime, the Blazers led 71-61. At that point, 37 of Portland’s points had come from the bench with Grant having 15 points and Love having 11.
While it was the starters that put the game out of reach in the second half, it was the bench that got the ball rolling.
Coming into tonight, the Lakers ranked 2nd in the NBA in free throw attempts, and the Blazers ranked fourth according to ESPN. However, playing without Deni Avdija made it seem like the free throws could swing largely in Los Angeles’s favor. That did not happen. Portland shot 34 shots from the line compared to the 21 shots from the Lakers. And while Los Angeles made 90% of their attempts compared to 76% from the Blazers, the impact was more in limited chances for the Lakers than the specific numbers.
Without being able to consistently get to the free throw line, Los Angeles struggled to find sources of offense to stop Portland momentum throughout runs.
Clingan was impactful yet again in the game as he contributed his 14th double-double of the season in an 18-point, 11-rebound performance. He shot 6 of 7 from inside the arc in the game; however, he made just one of his seven attempts from three. You read that right: seven attempts from deep, a new career-high for Clingan. His shot from deep has improved significantly this season, but that many attempts still jumps off the page. For a player as efficient as Clingan is inside the paint, that many shots from outside is hard to justify, especially when he makes just one.
Of course Clingan is still young and adding that to his game in future years will be a significant boost for him, so shooting 1 of 7 from deep in a blowout win is not a bad decision, just a weird one to watch happen.
In a game without Luka Doncic or Austin Reaves, it was Marcus Smart that took over the guard scoring duties for the Lakers. He finished with 25 points on 9 of 17 shooting from the field and 4 of 6 from three. Much of that came in the third quarter where he scored 14 of his points. He was the only Laker able to really fight back against the third quarter onslaught of the Blazers, including a 10-point contribution from Sharpe, but he could not keep up by himself. Despite the huge quarter, Portland was able to limit the rest of Los Angeles and outscore them 36-29 overall on their way to a huge win.
The Blazers are heading down to Sacramento to play the Kings tomorrow, Sunday Jan. 18 at 6pm Pacific.