PORTLAND, Ore. _ A peak to which D'Angelo Russell aspires presented itself Thursday at the Moda Center, in the form of Portland Trail Blazers point guard Damian Lillard.
Back from an ankle injury that kept him out five games, Lillard wasn't quite at his best. But he gave Portland a boost that helped lift it over the Los Angeles Lakers.
Portland beat the Lakers, 118-109, shooting 53.1 percent and outscoring the Lakers 24-9 on fastbreak points. The Lakers had a 14-point lead in the second quarter, revisiting a recurring theme by losing that lead completely by the end of the third quarter.
"Offensively, we're still at a point where we look at a lead and we think it's bigger than it really is," Lakers coach Luke Walton said. "In the NBA a six-point lead is nothing. We started searching out some threes where we really needed to push the ball, set hard screens, dive."
Lillard finished with 21 points, including a critical fourth-quarter three-pointer that started the final Portland run to take the game. Lillard also had 10 assists and five rebounds. C.J. McCollum led all scorers with 27 points. Russell led the Lakers with 22 points on six-of-18 shooting. He had two assists and four rebounds. Lakers forward Julius Randle scored 17 points with nine rebounds and five assists.
The Lakers fell to 13-26 with the loss, and have lost 16 of their last 19 games, with only three wins since the start of December. Portland improved to 16-22.
Russell gave the Lakers a four-point lead with 5 minutes 39 seconds left in the game, but the Trail Blazers ripped off a 13-1 run that began with Lillard's three-pointer.
"I think it started on defense," Walton said. "... There were two plays on defense, one we had a great possession and forced an airball. Sometimes those are hard to rebound but then we left Lillard. Lillard got a wide-open three and the next time C.J. got a wide-open three. We had the momentum up to that point. It was a good feeling but you could feel after those two plays, momentum shifted."
The Lakers' offense worked in the first half, with Jordan Clarkson especially productive despite playing with an elbow injury and a cold. Clarkson made five of eight first-half shots and had three three-pointers.
The Lakers opened the second quarter on a 13-0 run, propelled in part by guard Clarkson. He scored 13 of the Lakers' 38 second-quarter points that helped L.A. enter halftime with a nine-point lead.
But even before that quarter ended, the Lakers' lead began to evaporate. What was a 14-point advantage with 1:22 left in the second quarter fell to nine by halftime off a three-pointer by Lillard and a dunk by Portland forward Al-Farouq Aminu.
The third quarter saw that lead die altogether. After Portland cut the Lakers' lead to five, Walton subbed out every starter except Brandon Ingram, who took the place of injured forward Luol Deng.
"Honestly, I didn't feel like we had our legs," Walton said. "Not sure why. It felt like we came out the first couple plays we ran, we weren't cutting hard, we weren't pushing the ball up in the spots we wanted the ball in. That's not OK, so we made a mass sub and tried to regroup from there."
The game was tied at 84 by the end of the third period, then Portland took over in the fourth quarter.
Portland center Mason Plumlee fouled out with 35.7 seconds left in the game. His final foul sent Ingram to the line. Ingram made one of his two free throws, bringing the Lakers' deficit to six. That was as close as they could get.
