Houston Rockets vs. Portland Trail Blazers game preview

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).

The Houston Rockets come into town with a tanking circus of their own. With the deck stacked in their favor, Houston still found a way to get blown out by the Dallas Mavericks. That task will be much more difficult tonight, as DraftKings actually has the Rockets as 3.5-point favorites tonight with the moneyline at -165. Basically, it would take a miracle for the Rockets to lose and stay two games ahead of Orlando and Detroit.

But this is March. And Madness happens all the time in March.

Tip-off is at 9pm CT on AT&T SportsNet Southwest

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