Lakers Set for Showdown With Surging Trail Blazers

The Portland Trail Blazers finally get their first match-up of the season with the Lakers tonight, and it’s the biggest game to hit Memorial Coliseum in a long, long time.

“We’ve been talking about measuring sticks all year,” Portland Coach Rick Adelman said, “and this is the ultimate one.”

Portland enters the game with a 33-12 record, half a game behind the Lakers in the Pacific Division standings. If the Blazers win, they’ll have the best record in the NBA.

If the Lakers lose to Portland, something that hasn’t happened in nearly two years, they will have to beat Chicago on Wednesday night in Los Angeles to earn a share of first place in the division standings as the league takes its break for the All-Star Game.

Tonight’s game is the last for Portland before the All-Star break.

The Lakers are going into tonight’s game with a two-game winning streak.

The team has received an added spark of late from guard Byron Scott, who has ended a cold-shooting spell. In his last four games, Scott has made 36 of 55 shots and has either led or shared the team lead in scoring.

The Lakers are used to beating Portland. They’ve done it nine straight times, including a three-game sweep in the first round of last year’s playoffs. But the Trail Blazers are vastly improved this year.

“It would be a great win for us,” Adelman said, but he cautioned that it’s just one contest in an 82-game schedule.

“People tend to go a little overboard on this one game,” he said. “We play them four more times. We feel good about where we’re at. But we’re nowhere near where they are because they’ve been together a lot longer.”

And the Lakers, he said, are a very good team, despite the retirement of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

“They don’t have Kareem in the middle, but when you look at their team, they’re just so solid in the first eight guys,” Adelman said.