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SALT LAKE CITY — Damian Lillard pulled up for a 35-foot 3-pointer early in the second half. It missed. Lillard can make that shot. He has made that shot before. But still, there seemed to be a sense of desperation to it.
Maybe Lillard knew that the Portland Trail Blazers were going to need a special outing from him. Or maybe he just didn’t want a repeat of what happened at the end of the second quarter. That’s when Lillard drove into the paint and decided to go for a dunk over Rudy Gobert.
That didn’t end well for the Portland guard.
Actually, it may have been considered a Christmas miracle if anything good happened for the Blazers at the rim against Gobert.
Gobert was special in Utah’s 117-96 Christmas Day win over Portland at Vivint Arena. Gobert finished with seven blocks on the night — and he had all of those before the final quarter even started. And that was just the beginning of the Gobert’s dominance.
“It’s all about being aware and being disciplined,” Gobert said. “I try to communicate to my teammates to help them out, and then when they get beat, I try to have their backs. That’s how the team works and it’s great.”
And it was clear how it worked on Tuesday.
Portland cut the Utah lead to single digits in the fourth quarter, but they made the run when Gobert was on the bench. Once the big man came back in, it was game over for the Blazers.
Gobert's first offensive possession back, he got a dunk. He later intercepted a CJ McCollum lob. And then Gobert caught an alley-oop and hammered it in over Meyers Leonard — drawing the foul in the process. Utah’s lead just kept continuing to grow and grow.
“He affects shots and his presence affects shots,” Portland coach Terry Stotts said of the Frenchman.
The Gobert-led Utah defense held Portland to just 39.3 percent shooting and pushed the Jazz to their second blowout win over the Blazers in less than a week. Lillard finished with 20 points and CJ McCollum had just 11.
“Everything we believe in as a team and an organization defensively on what makes us good is what we have been doing,” Joe Ingles said.
But the Jazz weren’t too bad offensively, either. And outside of a cold spell in the third quarter, they were actually pretty good.
Utah shot 52 percent from the field, 45 percent from 3-point range and had seven players finish in double figures.
Donovan Mitchell got the Jazz going offensively on the first half. He scored 14 of his 19 points before the break. And two of those were quite memorable.
Mitchell somehow had the hangtime to catch a half-court pass from Jae Crowder with one hand, bring it to both hands before slamming the ball home.
It was part of a mini-first half duel between Mitchell and Lillard. Lillard scored 16 points in the first half (he finished with 20) to keep the Blazers close. Utah led by 12, 59-47, at the break. But Gobert’s block on Lillard in the closing minutes of the first half seemed to change the tide of the game. Lillard struggled from then on out and Gobert — and the Jazz — dominated.
And that gave the Jazz and their fans a very Merry Christmas.
