Oklahoma City Thunder vs Portland Trail Blazers Prediction: Can Portland overcome close loss?

NBA is on and there have been so many head-spinning scenarios where lower ranked teams have quashed their nine-ten game winning streak has made obvious predictions fail. But this is what NBA is about, throwing a lot of curveballs. What curveballs will be thrown when the Oklahoma City Thunder takes on the Portland Trail Blazers.

The Trail Blazers and the Thunder met just a couple days of ago and in that game, the Thunder prevailed 123:121 as Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scooped up 35 points. This was a beautiful game as the two teams were within one or two points of each other for most of the game, especially late. Shai and Damian Lillard were exchanging buckets in crunch time but then with 0.2 seconds left, Shai made the game-clinching shot. The Trail Blazers did lose but this was another promising effort from them.

That win improved the Thunder to 13 wins and 18 losses, currently on a two-game winning streak. Their offense has improved by miles but their defense has taken a hit, but this has been a much better trend. The trouble is that the offense is all about Shai and apart from him, there is no other consistent scorer. The Trail Blazers have lost two of the last three games but they have done a great job of 17 wins and 14 losses. Unlike Thunder, Damian Lillard hasn’t been the only big factor offensively as Jerami Grant and Anfernee Simons have linked up a bunch of 20+ points nights.

• Thunder: OUT: Josh Giddey, Ousmane Dieng, Darius Bazley, Jeremiah Robinson-Earl, Chet Holmgren;
• Trail Blazers: OUT: Nasir Little, Gary Payton II. PROBABLE: Damian Lillard, Jerami Grant, Drew Eubanks. QUESTIONABLE: Josh Hart, Jusuf Nurkic.

These two were in one of the closest battles all season long a couple of days ago so, at home, the Thunder were able to survive a big-time effort from the Trail Blazers’ big three, especially Lillard. However, I don’t think that the Trail Blazers will allow the same fate to befall them again and will be much more disciplined on the defensive end. I see Damian Lillard knocking down a bunch of tough shots and Portland splitting the away-from-home scenario against the Thunder. I predict a scoreline of 124:116 in favor of the Trail Blazers.