And the Basketball Gods shall smile upon the Portland Trail Blazers

Maybe. Or maybe the Blazers are now all even on the ledger of Tank Karma.

Good morning. Let’s basketball.

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Memories; Fernand Khnopff; 1889

There have been a handful of truly surprising teams this NBA season, topped by the stunningly competent Detroit Pistons. The Cleveland Cavaliers also rate as surprising in a wide view, as do the Philadelphia 76ers, Phoenix Suns and New Orleans Pelicans. There’s another team in the Pistons vein, though, that isn’t going to make the playoffs or even play-in, but has been surprisingly competent, especially as the season wears on. That’s the Portland Trail Blazers, who have the incentive to try to lose games to improve their NBA draft status but who continue to win more games than you’d think and push superior teams to the brink.

Sure, the Blazers have lost five straight and are extremely unlikely to win enough games to steal the No. 10 seed from the Dallas Mavericks or Phoenix Suns. But the spirit’s there, and in stretches the results have been there. They might have played the NBA’s game of the year against the New York Knicks at Moda Center on Wednesday, an overtime battle with 42 lead changes and 17 ties, eventually ended by Mikal Bridges at the horn. Mike Breen Double Bang for dessert.

Bridges (and Breen) got there because the Blazers had the Knicks stressed. Deni Avdija continued his strong season, Scoot Henderson might have had the best game of his career, the defense continued its strong run after the All-Star break (No. 7 since then), Portland had every opportunity to roll over and didn’t. The Knicks just don’t roll over. It’s not in them. And so you get an instant classic that included with some epic shots a brutally timed review in regulation that screwed over Portland and a brutal and rare inbounds violation on Josh Hart to set up the Avdija and-1 that set up the Bridges shot.