Portland Trail Blazers Rumors
Damian Lillard: “Before they won, he was trying to get me to go to Milwaukee, and I was trying to tell him, ‘No, you come to Portland.’ Then, Pat Connaughton, who’s on our team now, was my rookie in Portland, and he was here for like two or three years. Then he ended up signing with Milwaukee, so when he was here, he was like the middleman. So we were in a group chat, all three of us, like, ‘Pat, tell him to come here.’ And he’s like, ‘No, tell Dame he needs to come to Milwaukee.’ It was ongoing like that. Then I see him at All-Star games, you know, like that, but that was really it. We was cool, not like we best friends or nothing, but I had his phone number, you know? We would text sometimes, but we were both the kind who wouldn’t overextend ourselves to tell the other what to do.”
Sean Highkin: Chauncey Billups on Jerami Grant: “I do think he’s underappreciated. Mainly because we just haven’t won. If you’re not a Blazers fan, you don’t see him. We’re never on national TV. So he does go under the radar. But the people that know, really know.”
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Oleh Kosel: Pelicans suffer first loss of season, falling 125-103 to Blazers. Portland grabbed momentum in 2nd QTR & rode it to finish. Nola’s approach, effort & execution were subpar. CJ McCollum: 27 PTS, 4 STL Jordan Hawkins: 17 PTS Brandon Ingram: 14 PTS, 8 REB Zion Williamson: 14 PTS
Sean Highkin: Chauncey Billups on Robert Williams III: “He’s doing good. Getting back out on the court. I’m not sure when he’ll be back but he’s getting better.”
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Jim Eichenhofer: CJ McCollum on Jordan Hawkins (24 pts, 8/12 FGs at Portland): “He was huge. He had one of the best training camps I’ve seen in my 12 (NBA) years. He’s gotten a lot better with his decision-making, his shot balance, shot credibility, his ability to finish around the basket.”
Charles Barkley on Nuggets: 'They might be in trouble'
The Nuggets hosted the Oklahoma City Thunder in the late game of TNT’s doubleheader on Thursday night. They lost the game 102-87 and shot just 35.7 percent from the field. 14 different players played minutes for the Nuggets, but Barkley was not impressed with the group beyond the starting five. “The team that might be in trouble might be the Nuggets,” Barkley said on TNT’s postgame show. “Because they were pretty much last in the bench last year, and I saw nothing on that bench tonight to be like, ‘uh oh.’ And because the West is better. My Suns are better. New Orleans is better. Memphis is gonna be better. The only team in the West that’s not any good is Portland. “So the Nuggets, they gonna have to find a bench. They gonna have to do something, because it’s such a major dropoff on their bench. That’s not fair to [the starters].”
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