The Portland Trail Blazers are tanking. There’s really no other way to describe it. Losers of five of their last six, their only win came in a squeaker against the similarly loss-minded Detroit Pistons.
Portland shut down Damian Lillard for the season, have sat Jusuf Nurkic for over a month with plantar fasciitis, and sat Anfernee Simons and Eric Bledsoe against the Spurs in a must-lose for the Blazers. They lost, 133-96 in front of their fans at the Moda Center (a nice building that I visited last weekend for Second Round action of the NCAA Tournament).