Trail Blazers Summer League Ends In 75-73 Loss To Jazz
The Portland Trail Blazers ended their summer league on Friday evening in a 75-73 loss to the Utah Jazz in Las Vegas. The Blazers finished 2-3 in their five games in Sin City.
Friday saw the best performance we’ve seen this past week from Allen Crabbe and efficient shooting from Will Barton and CJ McCollum. However, all of those were not enough to defeat the Jazz who overcame a first quarter where they shot 6 percent from the field to win.
Dante Exum’s floater from the elbow was what eventually gave Utah the win as the Blazers had a turnover on their final possession of the game when they were down by two with 1.9 seconds left. CJ McCollum’s attempted backdoor lob to Will Barton was intercepted.
The Blazers summer league would have come to an end had they won or lost, nobody likes to go home ending on a loss. Although, Allen Crabbe can leave Las Vegas knowing he had one good game as he finished
Meyers Leonard finished with 9 points and 7 rebounds, which statistically was his best outing of summer league as well. However, the Jazz shot over 40 percent from three and Exum picked the right time to get a bucket to put Utah ahead for good.
Without Thomas Robinson, the Blazers lacked athleticism and activity, but today was a much better showing than last night’s debacle against Atlanta. It was, as Ben Golliver wrote, “a buzzkill.”
Not everything in Las Vegas went perfectly for the Blazers, but summer league is rarely without it’s rough patches. In fact, it’s mostly rough patches. Each player showed bits of improvement in spots throughout the week.
The Blazers summer league team had many kinds of performances ranging from great to “not respecting the game,” as David Vanterpool said last night. They were able to win a close game and missed out on two other close ones.
CJ McCollum will probably be a top-five scorer in the summer league once it’s over and Will Barton and Thomas Robinson left their mark with some highlight plays.
It was nice checking in on the younger guys and seeing some live NBA basketball, even if it was summer league.
I guess we’ll see what they have for us in October when training camp rolls around, which will be here before you know it.
Erik Gundersen
Erik Gundersen is the Trail Blazers beat reporter for The Columbian. He's a graduate of the Allen School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon in addition earning a degree in Spanish. He's covered the NBA for four seasons. You can also occasionally find his work on ESPN.com's NBA section for their TrueCities series. He also fist-bumped with Kanye West once. Follow @BlazerBanter on twitter for more Blazers and NBA news.