On their four-game road trip, the Portland Trail Blazers triumphed twice by dominating the second half after overcoming a subpar first half against the Cleveland Cavaliers on Wednesday night.
The Blazers played a totally different style of basketball in the second half, winning 103-95 at Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse, after struggling to manage the ball in the first half and falling behind by as many as 16 points.
The coach of the Blazers, Chauncey Billups, told reporters, “It was a tale of two halves.” “I felt that in the first half, their physicality and jumping in passing lanes hurt us.” Out there, we were acting like robots. Prior to the game, we discussed how they would be in the passing lanes. We had the opportunity to get beyond the defense, make layups and dunks, and create other opportunities—we just didn’t do it.
In the first half, the Cavaliers scored 23 points thanks to 15 turnovers committed by the Blazers. That was quite a different story in the second part, though.
“Merely inattentiveness,” Billups stated. “And it’s the irresponsible ones. “Throw it out of bounds if you’re going to turn it over,” I instructed them at halftime. We can at least prepare our defense. However, we are unable to recover from live-ball turnovers (on defense) and have an impact on that.
With 29 points, 20 of which came in the second half, Shaedon Sharpe led the Blazers to victory. He grabbed ten rebounds and made 11 of his 15 field goal attempts.
“Obviously, Shaedon was special tonight, like he is oftentimes, and everybody else just kind of helped and pitched in,” Billups said.
While eight players scored at least three field goals, no other Blazer scored more than thirteen points. Jerami Grant received a 13. After coming off the bench, Duop Reath scored 13 points on 4 of his 5 shots. Malcolm Brogdon scored eleven points and dished out seven assists. Even Scoot Henderson, who only made one of his eight field goals, contributed seven assists.
The Cavaliers were led by Donovan Mitchell’s 23 points, while Evan Mobley contributed 20 points and eight rebounds.
