Brandon Roy, Blazers trounce Clippers in L.A.

The Portland TrailBlazers trounced the Los Angeles Clippers 113-88 on Monday night, but Brandon Roy wasn’t happy.  Always the consummate competitor, Roy felt that his team shouldn’t have let their opponents stay in the game as long as they did—a stinging statement after a 15 point road victory.

Roy scored 33 points, but despite his impressive individual performance and a double digit victory his post game comments were surprisingly subdued:

"I thought we should have done a much better job of putting them away earlier, but you've just got to take the wins the way they come."

The Blazers’ superstar shooting guard gave credit to Travis Outlaw for helping the team pull away in the fourth quarter:

"Travis a good job of stepping up in the fourth quarter and allowed us to separate from them”

Outlaw scored 16 of his 20 points during a decisive 36-15 4th quarter that enabled the Blazers to break open a close contest and seal the victory.  Greg Oden added 16 points and 6 rebounds while Rudy Fernandez contributed 11 points off the bench.

The Clippers were led by 23 from Al Thornton, 21 from Steve Novak and 19 from Fred Jones.  Power forward Brian Skinner added 8 points and 10 rebounds.  The deep Portland bench dominated their LA counterparts, as the Blazers’ reserves outscored the Clippers reserves 50-21 (with Steve Novak accounting for all of his team’s bench scoring). 

Los Angeles trailed by a single point at halftime and by four points after the 3rd quarter despite being depleted by injuries to starters Zach Randolph, Marcus Canby, Chris Kaman and Baron Davis.  For that reason, Clippers’ coach Mike Dunleavy wasn’t particularly upset about Portland’s late game surge:

"Unfortunately, our guys just ran out of gas"

The Clippers beat Portland at the Rose Garden Arena in mid-December, with Randolph, Canby and Davis accounting for a combined 77 points and 29 rebounds.   Dunleavy gave considerable praise to the Blazers’ Brandon Roy in his postgame comments:

"Roy is the guy that drives the bus for them. We tried to pay more attention to him in the second half and he still made some good shots. With that, he also was able to create some open shots for other guys, and that is what your star player does."

Los Angeles is anticipating that Canby will return to the lineup within the next week.  They’ll host the Chicago Bulls on Wednesday night before leaving for a seven game road trip that will begin in Cleveland on Friday and continue in Washington on Saturday.  The Blazers, meanwhile, head back to the Rose City for games against the Charlotte Bobcats on Wednesday and a tough challenge against the Utah Jazz on Saturday night.