NBA scores 2016: Damian Lillard leads a Trail Blazers revival

Despite all their turnover last offseason, Portland has found themselves back in the playoff hunt with Lillard leading the way.

by Tim Cato

Jan 16, 2016, 1:00 PM UTC

Steve Dykes-USA TODAY Sports

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Damian Lillard is the last Portland Trail Blazer standing. LaMarcus Aldridge, the heart and soul of Portland for more than five years, left the city to assimilate to the machine-like Spurs. Nicolas Batum and Robin Lopez are playing on the opposite coast after. Wesley Matthews has found greener pastures in Dallas after recovering from an Achilles injury.

No, it's just Lillard now, carrying a team that was supposed to plummet towards the bottom of the Western Conference this season. They haven't. With a fourth quarter surge to beat the Brooklyn Nets 116-104 on Friday, the Trail Blazers are just a half-game behind the Utah Jazz for the No. 8 seed. Despite losing four-fifths of their starting lineup plus Arron Afflalo, Portland has successfully retooled for the future as they win in the present anyway.

They wouldn't be here without Lillard. He showed the perfect amalgamation of his skills on Friday, dropping 33 points and 10 assists while not turning the ball over once -- the first time someone's done that in a road game since Chris Paul pulled of the feat six years ago. Lillard nailed 13 shots on just 24 attempts, dropping home five shots from behind the three-point arc and doing it all so gracefully, like he had the Nets on a string for 48 minutes.

If you haven’t been paying attention -- and maybe you haven’t, because who in their right mind expected the Portland Trail Blazers to be a half-game out of the playoffs halfway through January -- this is just an extension of Lillard’s fantastic season. He’s averaging just shy of 25 points per night while shooting 42 percent (a number he can and will improve on) and 38 percent from behind the arc. He’s grabbing nearly five rebounds a night while dishing more than seven assists. The fourth-year pro shows growing pains now and again as he morphs into Portland’s new face of the franchise, but on Friday, all his skills showed up at once in a nice, neat package, all culminating in a Blazers’ win.

At 18-24, it's not like Portland is suddenly cured from their offseason loses. Their playoff positioning comes thanks to a weaker Western Conference, as Utah has struggled without Rudy Gobert, who recently returned, and Dante Exum, while playoff hopeful New Orleans crashed and burned. But Lillard is their cornerstone for the future and only 25. Around him, the Blazers have surrounded him with more youngsters with sky-high ceilings. The rest of the starting five, to illustrate the point, is 25-year-olds Al-Farouq Aminu and Mason Plumlee, 24-year-old C.J. McCollum and 20-year-old Noah Vonleh.

Portland felt confident headed into a post-Aldridge future thanks to Lillard, but perhaps even they couldn’t have expected the team to rebound as nicely as they did. Even if a playoff run doesn’t materialize and the healthier Jazz pull their team together, the Blazers have to be pleased. They haven’t mortgaged anything for the future, but yet here they are, just half a game out of the No. 8 seed halfway through a rebuilding season.

3 other things from Friday

Nothing has changed with the Houston Rockets

A recent headline proclaimed that the Rockets had "righted the ship," which is a nice sentiment if they weren't still sitting barely over .500 in the Western Conference's seventh seed. Friday's home embarrassment at the hands of the Cleveland Cavaliers only reaffirmed that the early season Houston squad we've seen isn't a fluke or a temporary disappointment -- this is really just who they're going to be this year. There's no magical cure or pungent potion that will make these team the dark horse contender they were called entering the season. No, this is just who they are.

Dallas makes things ugly and that’s just fine

The Mavericks' 83-77 win against the Chicago Bulls was truly one of the worst games played in the NBA this year. The low scores can't be attributed to an old school defensive struggle -- Dallas was just out of sync while the Bulls looked exhausted from the previous night's overtime win. For the Mavericks, though, how the win comes doesn't matter. They've got games against the Spurs, Thunder and Warriors coming up in the next seven matchups, along with some brutal traveling plans and a couple difficult back-to-backs. Picking up a victory in Chicago, no matter how unattractive it looked, was crucial for this team to stay afloat through the rest of January.

Hassan Whiteside leads the shorthanded Heat

Dwyane Wade and Goran Dragic both were absent with injuries in Miami's 98-95 win against the Denver Nuggets, leaving Whiteside and Chris Bosh to just about single-handedly carry the Heat. Whiteside dropped a massive triple-double, scoring 19 points to go with 17 rebounds and 11 blocks (!), while Bosh's typically efficient evening concluded with 24 points on 9-of-13 shooting. While Denver had a potentially game-tying look as the shot ran out, Jameer Nelson couldn't knock it down, allowing Miami to leave Colorado with a satisfying W.