The second game of a road back-to-back isn\u2019t always going to look pretty, but the Portland Trail Blazers managed to take care of business Monday night against an already injury-plagued Los Angeles Lakers squad.<\/p>\n
Despite barely fielding a full rotation of able bodies, Los Angeles hung close the whole game and forced the Blazers to try and come up with an answer for Austin Reeves, who for the second straight night looked like that if you squinted you might just see Jerry West. Once the Chosen One act was figured out (or just tired out) Portland was able to get out of Tinseltown with a 122-108 victory.<\/p>\n
While it was another cold shooting night for the team overall, Jrue Holiday was the Blazers\u2019 most consistent source of offense from start to finish – especially from the outside. The veteran finished with 24 points – including 4-7 from deep, to go along with 5 rebounds, 6 assists and 2 blocks.<\/p>\n
14-43 isn\u2019t exactly a stellar performance from beyond the arc, but compared to the Lakers\u2019 paltry 7-27 it is downright futuristic. This allowed Portland to hold an advantage despite allowing nearly twice as many free throws and being outscored 19-9 off the fast break.<\/p>\n
It would be remiss to not discuss Deandre Ayton, who managed to be one of the few recognizable Lakers healthy enough to take the court tonight against his former team. While the matchup with Donovan Clingan didn\u2019t deliver many fireworks, it still pretty well encapsulated why the Blazers were willing to pay Ayton to play literally anywhere else than in Portland.<\/p>\n
Clingan owned the glass, hauling in a game-high 14 boards to go along with 16 points and 2 blocks for his first double-double of the season. He was also a team-best +21 (tying Holiday) in just 26 minutes of action.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t total HumiliAyton – Ayton finished with a respectable 16 points and 8 rebounds – but it was hardly a revenge game either.<\/p>\n
The Blazers will get a day off before heading to Salt Lake City to take on the Utah Jazz Wednesday evening at 6 p.m. Pacific.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The second game of a road back-to-back isn\u2019t always going to look pretty, but the Portland Trail Blazers…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":337759,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[104111,1582,276,148381,2961,224,5337],"class_list":{"0":"post-337758","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-blazers-gameday-coverage","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-instant-recaps","12":"tag-la","13":"tag-los-angeles","14":"tag-losangeles"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115450317582221927","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=337758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337758\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/337759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}