Trail Blazers at Nets
The Brooklyn Nets are where other teams go when they want to get their offenses back in gear, and the Portland Trail Blazers could use a tune up. The Nets will try to hold an opponent under 124 points for the first time this week when they host the Trail Blazers on Sunday.
Brooklyn allowed an average of 118 points during a 1-4 road trip and watched the defense fall apart completely over the last three games as the Los Angeles Clippers, Los Angeles Lakers and Oklahoma City Thunder all put up at least 124 points. The Nets closed the trip with a 124-105 loss in Oklahoma City on Friday in which the Thunder shot 55.1 percent from the field and superstar Russell Westbrook breezed to a triple-double. Portland isn't exactly a defensive juggernaut, either, and yielded an average of 117.3 points during its current three-game slide, capped by a 113-101 loss at New Orleans on Friday that was the closest of the three final scores. "We're having a hard time putting things together for spans of time and teams are taking advantage of it," Blazers star Damian Lillard told reporters. "Sometimes we get ourselves back into a game, and then I had two turnovers in a row and there's a 10-point lead, it goes to 14 instead of us cutting it to five or six."
TV: 3:30 p.m. ET, CSN Northwest (Portland), YES (Brooklyn)
ABOUT THE TRAIL BLAZERS (7-7): Lillard, who told reporters, "we kind of suck right now, it's that simple," after a 126-109 loss to Houston on Thursday, went 8-of-24 from the field and scored 27 points at New Orleans. The point guard, who made news before the season by suggesting he would be in the MVP race at the end of the season, is shooting 34.9 percent from the field during the three-game slide. Lillard is shooting 57 percent from the floor in Portland's seven wins and 37 percent in the seven losses, including 27.1 percent from 3-point range.
ABOUT THE NETS (4-8): Brooklyn put up 40 points in the first quarter at Oklahoma City but could not keep that pace the rest of the way and quickly fell behind. "I felt like we stopped moving the ball offensively and stopped making the extra pass, and that fueled their transition," Nets coach Kenny Atkinson told reporters. "I just think defensively we've slipped these past three games." Some of the problems with making the extra pass stem from the absence of starting point guard Jeremy Lin (hamstring), who sat out the last seven games and remains questionable for Sunday.
BUZZER BEATERS
1. Nets G Bojan Bogdanovic is 23-of-35 from the floor over the last three games.
2. Trail Blazers C Mason Plumlee posted his first double-double of the season with 13 points and 12 rebounds on Friday.
3. Portland took five of the last six in the series, including both meetings last season.