Charlotte Hornets top Portland Trail Blazers with 71 first-half points

The Charlotte Hornets got their low-post scorer back Sunday.

After three games totaling just 19 points, center Al Jefferson scored 29 at Time Warner Cable Arena to push the Hornets to a 106-94 victory over the Portland Trail Blazers. The Hornets led by as many as 29 points, but the Blazers trimmed the deficit to single figures in the fourth quarter.

Small forward Nic Batum continued his torrid scoring pace of late with 33 points, two short of matching his career high, set when he was with the Trail Blazers.

The victory made the Hornets 5-5 entering Tuesday’s road game against the New York Knicks.

Damian Lillard scored 23 for the Blazers (4-7), all but four of those points in the first half.

Three who mattered

Batum: His third consecutive game of 20 or more points. He showed his former team just how much he has left.

Jefferson: Recovered from three poor scoring games to reassert himself in the post.

Lillard: He was just about all the Trail Blazers had in a brutal first half.

Observations

▪  The Trail Blazers are part of the trend in the NBA toward frequently playing two point guards together. Portland starts C.J. McCollom alongside Lillard, making it far harder to overload defensively on Lillard. Golden State made this popular playing Klay Thompson and Stephen Curry. Thompson isn’t technically a point guard, but he has those facilitator-type skills.

▪  Hornets coach Steve Clifford was wary of the 5 p.m. tip-off. He says any time players’ rhythms are thrown off by an early start it’s an invitation for slow starts.

▪  Clifford says ex-Hornet Gerald Henderson, now with the Trail Blazers, was by far his best practice player last season: “You always tell your players to be experts on your team game and he was.”

▪  The Trail Blazers have a brutal back-to-back, playing in San Antonio Monday night. That’s a long flight to play one of the best home teams in the league.

▪  Will Batum be named Eastern Conference Player of the Week on Monday?

Worth mentioning

▪  Cody Zeller was active Sunday after missing Friday’s game with an ankle injury. That meant rookie Aaron Harrison was inactive.

▪  The Hornets played the French national anthem before the game in a show of solidarity following Friday’s terrorist attacks in Paris.

▪  Hornets guard P.J. Hairston missed the second half after suffering a quad contusion.

They said it

“When I was 15.” – Batum when asked the last time he’s played as well as he did the past three games.

“He’s playing with great confidence. He has size, he has skill and he’s a good competitor and his basketball IQ is off the charts.” – Clifford on Batum.

“Everybody’s got to rebound. If you hit and block out, then the other guys don’t have a chance. And we’re not doing that.” – Clifford on his team’s rebounding shortcomings of late.

Report card

A OFFENSE: This was the first 70-plus point first half since January of 2010 versus the Phoenix Suns.

B+ DEFENSE: Holding an opponent under 70 points in three quarters is big, but Hornets still having some rebounding issues.

A COACHING: Clifford said Friday Jefferson’s struggles of late related to his not getting catches close enough to the rim. Problem corrected, for one game at least.

This story was originally published November 15, 2015 at 7:31 PM with the headline "Charlotte Hornets top Portland Trail Blazers with 71 first-half points."