Warriors at Trail Blazers
Damian Lillard didn't miss his chance to win a game in overtime on Thursday, but Kevin Durant did. Durant and the Golden State Warriors will try to get some quick revenge when they visit Lillard and the Portland Trail Blazers on Saturday in the back end of the home-and-home set.
Lillard buried a 3-pointer with 6.3 seconds left in overtime on Thursday, giving the Trail Blazers a 110-109 lead that became the final when Durant missed a jumper at the other end. "That's a shot I work on every day," Durant told reporters. "I'm pissed I missed that." Lillard, who grew up in Oakland and was making his final appearance in the city before the Warriors move across the bay to San Francisco next season, finished with 21 points and five assists in front of family and friends. "That's a hell of a way to go out," Lillard told reporters. "We need this win, it was a big game for us, especially having to play them two times in a row. Having played such a solid game, almost gave it up. It was huge for us, for us to have to dig the way we had to dig, come up big on so many possessions after we had kind of let them back in to the game. That was a great, great win, a great way to go out of here."
TV: 10 p.m. ET, NBATV, NBCS Bay Area (Golden State), NBCS Northwest (Portland)
ABOUT THE WARRIORS (23-13): Golden State dropped its last two games and three of the last five as it continues to look for the form that took the team to three of the last four NBA titles. "It was just kind of stagnant in the first half," Warriors star Stephen Curry told reporters. "Not a lot of thrust and energy and aggressiveness. Defensively we were OK after the first three or four minutes. Other games it's been indecisiveness in certain stretches of the game. We're getting teams best shots, so we got to fight our way through it. And just claw and scratch and get to that 48-minute level that we dominate teams, and we can get there." Curry finished with 29 points and seven assists on Thursday but committed the turnover that led to Lillard's go-ahead 3-pointer.
ABOUT THE TRAIL BLAZERS (20-15): Portland center Jusuf Nurkic collected 27 points on 10-of-18 shooting and 12 rebounds on Thursday as he took advantage of a Warriors team lacking a true center. "Nurk carried us during that stretch," Trail Blazers coach Terry Stotts told reporters. "The way he finished on the block, he had a good matchup. It was disappointing when he drew some double teams, he made some nice passes and we got some wide-open shots. We haven't done that a lot but to be able to play through him like that was a real advantage for us against their small lineup." Nurkic was one of the few Portland players to enjoy a decent shooting night Thursday, with the rest of the club shooting 32.2 percent from the floor.
BUZZER BEATERS
1. Warriors SG Klay Thompson went 2-of-9 from 3-point range and is shooting 20.8 percent from beyond the arc over the last eight contests.
2. Trail Blazers SG Seth Curry is 9-of-16 from 3-point range over the last three contests.
3. Portland took both home meetings against Golden State last season.