The Portland Trail Blazers take on one of their toughest remaining opponents tonight, traveling to Ball Arena to take on Nikola Jokic and the burgeoning Denver Nuggets.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The Nuggets are very, very, very good at basketball. It is bad writing practice to use the word \u201cvery\u201d as an amplifier, much less use it three times. However, that\u2019s the only way to emphasize how the Nuggets are currently rolling. Three-time MVP Nikola Jokic still possesses the ability to \u201cturn it on\u201d come playoff time, a quality evident by the Nuggets\u2019 most recent matchup with the 2nd-seeded San Antonio Spurs. This contest revealed that there are, in fact, levels to this game, and the top seeds in the Western Conference operate on that level.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The Nuggets, plain and simple, are better than the Blazers. Much like every other team that exists \u2013 and has ever existed \u2013 the Blazers do not match up well with Jokic. On the back of the world\u2019s best player, the Nuggets possess the league\u2019s best offense over the last two weeks of play, trailing only\u2026 the Hornets??<\/em> Anyway\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This matchup is going to depend on how the Blazers are able to contain the Nuggets\u2019 three-point shooting. Having to worry about matchups like Cameron Johnson, Jamal Murray, Tim Hardaway Jr., Bruce Brown, and Aaron Gordon makes that containment easier said than done. Not to mention Jokic\u2019s knack for doing a pirouette into a 720 spin-move before throwing up a one-footed dagger, as he did over Victor Wembanyama on Saturday night. All of that is to say, the Blazers will be relying upon some poor shooting luck to remain in this contest.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In their first contest with the Nuggets, during the Emirates\u2122 NBA Cup Group Stage, the Blazers won through exactly this manner, containing the nuggets to 24% shooting from three. Granted, the Blazers also shot 28%, but it was an advantage, nonetheless! As with most successful games, Portland also won the turnover battle, committing only 12 turnovers and grabbing six more offensive rebounds than the Nuggets. First, I didn\u2019t know the Blazers were capable of committing only 12 turnovers. Is this stat sheet real? Are we pulling a reverse-90s and deflating statistics? Second, now that both teams have settled into their respective identities of \u201creally good contending basketball team,\u201d and \u201coh my god we might be .500\u201d (I\u2019ll let you decide who\u2019s who), it is unlikely that the Blazers will once again win the turnover battle. The question will be: How many times can they cough the ball up to the league\u2019s most offensively competent team and get away with it?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n If the Blazers do<\/em> find the secret sauce against the Nuggets tonight, then they will be guaranteed to finish with at least a .500 for the first time since the 2020-2021 NBA Season. That\u2019s incredibly depressing, but also optimistic! Things are beginning to look up for the Blazers. In the immediate term, a win against one of the league\u2019s true contenders would be a good vibe-boost heading into the Play-In Tournament.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Portland Trail Blazers (40-38) vs. Denver Nuggets (50-28) – Mon. Apr 6th – 6pm Pacific<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n How to watch via antenna or cable: <\/strong>See your options on the Rip City Television Network<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n How to watch via streaming: <\/strong>BlazerVision in Oregon and Washington; League Pass or NBA TV everywhere else.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Trail Blazers injuries: <\/strong>Jerami Grant, Vit Krejci, Damian Lillard, Shaedon Sharpe (Out).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Nuggets Injuries: <\/strong>Bruce Brown (Questionable); Spencer Jones, Zeke Nnaji, Peyton Watson (Out)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Jokic Plan.<\/strong> What approach will the Blazers take with Jokic? There are typically two schools of thought: First, allow Jokic to score as much as he wants, which restricts the involvement of the rest of his teammates. Problems begin to arise when he scores too<\/em> much, but Toumani Camara and Donovan Clingan have as good a chance as anyone to slow him down. Second, you try to limit his individual scoring impact, which frees him up to throw no-look baseball passes directly into his teammate\u2019s shooting pocket from 70 feet away. It really is a \u201cpick your poison\u201d kind of matchup. Which one will the Blazers choose?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Slow Starts.<\/strong> The Blazers cannot afford to come out of the gate sluggish, as they did in their previous contest against the New Orleans Pelicans. The Nuggets are less forgiving than the Pelicans when it comes to winning basketball games. I\u2019m guessing the Blazers understand this, but need to channel it into poised, energetic play. A slow start is a losing start against the most efficient offense in the league.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The Portland Trail Blazers take on one of their toughest remaining opponents tonight, traveling to Ball Arena to take on Nikola Jokic and the burgeoning Denver Nuggets. The Nuggets are very, very, very good at basketball. It is bad writing practice to use the word \u201cvery\u201d as an amplifier, much less use it three times. … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26471,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Trail-Blazers-Travel-to-Mile-High-City-for-Final-Bout.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26470"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26472,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26470\/revisions\/26472"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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