PORTLAND — Damian Lillard had 36 points and 11 assists to lead the Portland Trail Blazers to a 132-105 win over the Utah Jazz on Wednesday night.
Lillard’s backcourt mate CJ McCollum was excellent as well, scoring 30 points in the win.
Donovan Mitchell had 22 points to lead Utah.
McCollum, only one game removed from his first career triple-double, stayed red hot. The Blazers guard made all nine of his shots in the first quarter and had 20 by the end of the period.
Even when he wasn’t shooting, he was still scoring. An attempted lob pass from McCollum to Blazers center Meyers Leonard went in the basket anyway.
McCollum didn’t miss a shot until he clanked a free-throw with 9:02 left in the second quarter and didn’t miss a field goal until later in the period.
After the Jazz cut the Blazers lead that had once been at 27 down to 10 with 7:57 left in the third quarter, the Blazers put the game away scoring the next 17 points.
With the win, the Blazers tied the season series with the Jazz at 2-2.
Portland’s starting center Jusuf Nurkic was a late scratch with a sore right knee.
The Blazers and Jazz played on Wednesday night for the 4th time since December 21. With all of the games against the same team in such a short period of time, Blazers head coach Terry Stotts said it’s somewhat similar to a playoff setting.
“A little bit,” Stotts said when asked if it was at all like a playoff matchup. “I talked to the team during shoot around today like, we should know some of these calls when they’re going through their sets. We should know these calls by now. Granted it’s not as compact amount of time in a playoff series but there is a degree that you know that team a little bit better than you would if you played them once a month.”
