PORTLAND — Three minutes into the game, Trail Blazers center Marcus Camby blocked Shawn Marion’s four-foot shot into the crowd, then put his hand above his forehead and gazed into the stands as if to say “how high did that go?”
Fitting gesture for Portland. After a strong performance in Game 3, things are looking up.
Behind a crowd consistently redefining the limits of the decibel level, the Blazers beat the Dallas Mavericks 97-92 Thursday night and now trail the series two games to one. They got 25 points from Wesley Matthews, 20 from LaMarcus Aldridge and 16 from Brandon Roy in one of the more emotional performances of the year.
Staving off Mavericks’ runs led by Jason Terry and Dirk Nowitzki, Portland has new-found life after appearing to be 48 minutes away from evaporating. As Blazers forward Gerald Wallace said a few hours before tip-off: “We just need one game.”
They got it Thursday. Now they have to make sure it wasn’t an isolated incident.
“I thought we worked for it tonight,” Blazers coach Nate McMillan said. “Dallas is a good team. The game was looking like the last two games. We won the first quarter, lost the second. We said ‘look, we wanted to win the third and fourth.’ We finally were able to do that.”
The game started about as auspiciously as possible for Portland, with Matthews hitting his first six shots, his first four 3-pointers, and tallying 16 points by the end of the first quarter. The open looks came in large part due to the Blazers re-establishing Aldridge as the offensive focal point — feeding the power forward in the post and having him kick to open shooters as the defense collapsed.
And as Matthews continued to make defensive helpers pay, Aldridge was free to operate.
What ensued was an incredibly efficient offensive first half … for both teams.
The Blazers led 54-52 at halftime after shooting 57.5 percent through the first 24 minutes. But Dallas was shooting 60 percent thanks to one man who seemingly couldn’t miss.
Terry, the Mavericks’ sixth man, checked in less than four minutes into the game and quickly validated coach Rick Carlisle’s decision to do so — scoring 17 of his 29 points in the first two periods and finishing the game 10 of 13 from the field. Nowitzki provided another consistent performance, netting 25 points on 10 of 21 shooting.
But it wasn’t enough Thursday. And Roy can take a lot of credit for that.
Two nights earlier, the former All-Star was used for a season-low eight minutes. He later admitted that his limited playing time had him on the brink of tears before expressing surprise that his role was so diminutive .
The reaction sparked controversy, but in Game 3 he showed he more than belonged on the court, hitting 6 of his first 7 shots and scoring nine points in his first nine minutes.
Roy said he got a text message from Charles Barkley before the game telling him to keep his head up. He also quoted a college friend, who once told him “tough times don’t last, tough people do.”
After the game, an almost giddy Roy reflected on the emotion surrounding his performance.
“I means a lot to me. I can’t put it above (other big games), but it’s right there,” Roy said. “Once I heard that crowd support nothing else mattered.”
Nevertheless, Portland had a difficult time pulling away.
When Jason Kidd knocked down a 3-pointer with 5:24 left in the third quarter, the Mavericks went ahead 65-60 and took their biggest lead of the game. But over the course of about the next 10 minutes, the Blazers went on a 27-9 run that put them ahead by as many as 13 points in the fourth quarter.
A major contributor in the stretch was rookie Chris Johnson, who was called up from the NBA Development League toward season’s end as an insurance big man. He didn’t look like a rookie in Game 3 — grabbing three rebounds and providing a huge block at the end of the third quarter.
“I don’t know if I can express how important his minutes were,” Aldridge said of Johnson. “He’s like a pogo stick out there.”
Didn’t mean the game was over, though. Dallas battled back, and when Kidd appeared to hit a 3-pointer with 12 seconds left to pull the Mavs to within two points, things looked dicey. Then the referees ruled it a 2, held the call up upon review, and Portland iced it with two free throws via Andre Miller.
Game notes
• Dallas has a five-year run of playoff road futility, a 2-17 record dating to the 2006 NBA Finals.
• Matthews’ four 3-pointers in the first quarter matched the team playoff record for a quarter, held by Terry Porter and Rudy Fernandez.
• Aldridge received the team’s inaugural Maurice Lucas Award for the player that best represents the true spirit of Lucas, the former Blazer player and assistant coach who died in October after a battle with cancer.
• Dallas’ Tyson Chandler fouled out with 7:24 left.
