Trail Blazers at Spurs
The Portland Trail Blazers’ tour of the Southwest Division is not going so well. The Trail Blazers will attempt to halt a three-game slide when they take on the class of the Southwest at the San Antonio Spurs on Wednesday. Portland is three games into a five-game trip that will take it through all five teams in the Southwest and has already fallen at Dallas, Houston and Memphis.
The Spurs lead the Western Conference - a half-game ahead of the Oklahoma City Thunder - on the strength of a seven-game winning streak. San Antonio is winning by an average of 12.6 points in the last seven games and is getting healthier with Kawhi Leonard and Tony Parker back in the lineup and thriving. The Trail Blazers’ three-game slide dipped them 2 1/2 games behind the Los Angeles Clippers in the battle for the No. 3 spot in the West.
TV: 9:30 p.m. ET, ESPN, CSN Northwest (Portland), FSN Southwest (San Antonio)
ABOUT THE TRAIL BLAZERS (42-22): Portland let leads slip away late at Dallas and Houston to begin the trip and could not get the deficit under nine points in the fourth quarter of Tuesday’s 109-99 loss to the Grizzlies. “We’ve just got to go out there and keep playing,” guard Damian Lillard told reporters. “We can’t be worried about what’s happened these last three games and we can’t get caught up in, ‘there’s something missing, we need to fix this, we need to fix that.’ We’ve got to go out there and be ourselves and try to make it a game coming down the stretch and try to win one.” Lillard put up 32 points in Memphis, his first outing of 30 or more since Feb. 25.
ABOUT THE SPURS (47-16): San Antonio’s winning streak coincides directly with Leonard’s return from a broken hand, and Parker came back five games ago to lend more firepower to the offense. The Spurs dominated one of the best defenses in the league at Chicago on Tuesday, racing out to a 61-33 advantage at the half before cruising to a 104-96 triumph. Manu Ginobili scored 24 points on 9-of-11 shooting in the win and is averaging 15.6 points on 55.7 percent shooting during the winning streak.
BUZZER BEATERS
1. Trail Blazers G Mo Williams (hip) left Tuesday’s game and is day-to-day.
2. San Antonio snapped a four-game losing streak in the series with a 111-109 triumph in Portland on Feb. 19.
3. Portland F LaMarcus Aldridge is shooting 35.2 percent from the field in the last four games.