Photo credit: @warriors

By Jerry Feitelberg

The Golden State Warriors fell behind by 20 points in the first half almost made an incredible comeback, but they could not catch the Portland Trail Blazers as they lost 123-117 Wednesday night at the Moda Center.

The Warriors had another poor first quarter as the Blazers came out firing. The Blazers’ backcourt duo of C.J. McCollum and Damien Lillard were unstoppable as they led the team to victory over the Warriors. The Blazers snapped a seven-game losing streak to the Warriors and sent the Warriors down to second place in the Western Conference. With the loss, the Warriors record of 44-14 is 1/2 game behind the Houston Rockets’ 44-13. The Rockets also own the tie-breaker with the Warriors which means if the teams finish the season with an identical record, the Rockets would have home-court advantage throughout the playoffs.

The Blazers raced to a 40-27 advantage after the first period. The Warriors finished the first half trailing by 12 points 63-51. Kevin Durant came to life in the third quarter, and he tallied 18 points to help close the gap to 92-87 after three quartersof play. The Warriors came close and tied the game at one point, but they could never regain the lead. KD hit a 3-pointer to make it 114-111 late in the fourth quarter. McCollum answered with a three of his own with just 2:15 left to play. The Blazers handled all the challenges and finished the night with another victory at home.

Game Notes and Stats: The Warriors are off until February 22nd when they meet the LA Clippers at Oracle Arena. The Warriors’ Big Four of Kevin Durant, Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green are heading to Los Angeles to play in the annual NBA All-Star game. Head coach Steve Kerr is on his way to Hawaii for a few days of rest and relaxation.

The Blazers’ backcourt duo of McCollum and Lillard scored 73 points and the Blazer defense held Curry and Thompson to just 34. The Warriors bench did not give the team much help offensively as they were outscored by Portland’s bench 21-16. The Warriors committed 16 turnovers in the loss.

The offensive star for Golden State was Kevin Durant, who knocked down 50 points, and had six assists, seven rebounds, and two blocked shots.

Green had a double-double with 16 points and 12 boards.

Steve Kerr was very thoughtful about the events that took place in Parkland, Florida, where at least 17 people were killed in another tragic school shooting. Kerr had this to say, ”Nothing has been done. It doesn’t seem to matter to our government that children are being shot to death day after day in schools. It doesn’t matter that people are being shot at a concert, movie theater. It’s not enough apparently to move our leadership, our government, the people who are running this country, to actually do anything. That’s demoralizing. But we can do something about it: We can vote people in who actually have the courage to protect people’s lives and not just bow down to the NRA because they financed their campaign for them. Hopefully we’ll find enough people, first of all, to vote good people in, but hopefully we can find enough people with courage to actually help our citizens remain safe and focus on the real safety issues, not building some stupid wall for billions of dollars that has nothing to do with our safety, but actually protecting us from what truly is dangerous, which is maniacs with semi-automatic weapons just slaughtering our children. It’s disgusting.”

Up Next: The Warriors host the Clippers at Oracle Arena next Thursday, February 22 at 7:30 pm PT.