Trail Blazers at Pacers
The Indiana Pacers found a higher gear on the last two legs of their road trip and head home with some momentum. The Pacers will try to keep the offense flowing and post a third straight win when they make a one-game stop at home to host the Portland Trail Blazers on Monday.
Indiana, which heads back out for visits to New York and Chicago this week, fell at Minnesota last Monday but shot 52.9 percent from the floor in a 116-96 triumph at San Antonio on Wednesday and exploded at Cleveland on Saturday, shooting 64.9 percent from the floor in a 119-107 win. "We definitely moved the ball at a high level," Pacers star guard Victor Oladipo told reporters. "A lot of guys touched it, a lot of guys (scored) in double figures (Saturday), so that's huge." The Trail Blazers split the first two stops on their four-game trip and are coming off a 120-111 loss at Miami. "I thought (Miami) made some timely shots," Portland coach Terry Stotts told reporters. "We gave up a key rebound on a free throw, that hurt us. But they made some big plays in the last three minutes. The timely shooting made the difference."
TV: 7 p.m. ET, NBCS Northwest (Portland), FS Indiana
ABOUT THE TRAIL BLAZERS (3-2): Portland star Damian Lillard totaled 83 points in the first two games of the road trip and is averaging 33.8 in the early going. The Trail Blazers trailed by 19 in the third quarter at Miami but came all the way back to take the lead before running out of gas in the setback, and Lillard's 42 points on 15-of-28 shooting sparked the comeback. "Sometimes when the team is struggling — we weren’t making shots, we weren’t getting a ton of stops — sometimes you’ve got to take it upon yourself to light a fire, be a spark that the team needs. I tried to do that," Lillard told reporters.
ABOUT THE PACERS (4-2): Indiana's starting five combined to shoot 67.2 percent from the floor on Saturday and point guard Darren Collison enjoyed his best game with a season-high 15 points on 5-of-8 shooting. Collison was held to a total of 10 points on 3-of-13 shooting in the previous two contests. "I was able to get a rhythm," Collison told reporters. "You look at some of our games, either we blew them out or we got blown out in the first five games. I wasn’t able to find a rhythm. I felt like this game, I knew it was going to be a little bit close because we’re missing (guard) Tyreke (Evans) a little bit and I was going to find my rhythm."
BUZZER BEATERS
1. Evans (personal) sat out Saturday but is expected to return on Monday.
2. Trail Blazers C Jusuf Nurkic scored a season-low five points on 2-of-7 shooting Saturday - the first time he failed to reach double figures in 2018-19.
3. Portland took both meetings last season, including a 114-96 win at Indiana.