The Portland Trail Blazers are one of the top three teams in the NBA this season, and the Cavaliers have played them down to the wire in two games this season.
Unfortunately for the Cavs, they’ve lost both matchups, including a 108-96 defeat on Wednesday night at Moda Center.
So, it that frustrating or encouraging for the young Cavs?
“It’s both,” said Tristan Thompson, faced with the unenviable task of trying to guard Portland’s All-Star power forward LaMarcus Aldridge, who finished with 32 points and 18 rebounds. “When you look back at it there’s some good things we did and things we could’ve done better. With every game I look at the positive and what we can build from.
“Taking that team to the wire is definitely a sign of us competing. Coach empahsizes us competing every night and that’s what we did.”
Kyrie Irving did not disagree.
“It’s frustrating because you obviously want to get the win,” he said. “But there’s definitely positives that you can take from a loss like this.”
After Aldridge nearly turned the ball over against Anderson Varejao and instead hit his first 3-pointer of the season, the Blazers had a 96-94 lead with 3:18 left.
“That was a tough shot,” Thompson said. “You’d rather have LaMarcus Aldridge take a desperation 3 than having him comfortable backing you down. He made a tough shot. That’s what tough players do in this league.”
A Varejao tip-in tied the game at 96-96 with 2:54 left, but from there on out it was all Trail Blazers. Aldridge scored six straight points to start the Blazers on a 12-0 run to close out the game as Portland improved to 29-9.
“He played MVP caliber tonight,” Thompson said of Aldridge. “He got the best of me tonight.”
Playing the second night of a back-to-back, Deng finished with 25 points and Irving added 21 for the Cavs, who fell to 14-25, 4-17 on the road. They are now 2-2 on this five-game Western Conference trip that will conclude on Friday in Denver.
The Cavs competed for 45 minutes but seemed to run out of gas in the final three.
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