Back in Front of Their Fans, Blazers Beat the Lakers
A high-stakes game, Nurkic's return, and the beautiful sound of fans helped push the Blazers to a crucial win.
By
Gabriel Granillo
5/8/2021 at 10:00am
Third quarter at Friday night's Blazers game against the Los Angeles Lakers, the first game in the Moda Center with fans since March 2020.Â
It felt like one big collective sigh. All of Portlandâs pent up pandemic energy and dread and fear just washing over into waves and cheers and applause. Before the Trail Blazers took to the court for their first home game with fans at the Moda Center since March 2020, there had been a spattering of applause. The 10 percent capacity crowdâjust under 2,000âmade themselves known with bits of nervous fandom here and there: a quick wave of a Rip City flag, a distant âBeat LAâ chant, echoed yips and yays. But by the time the lights dimmed and the Blazers starting lineupâ Norman Powell, Robert Covington, Jusuf Nurkic, C.J. McCollum, and Damian Lillardâmade their entrance, whatever reservations there had been about a new normal way to watch games had fallen by the wayside. And all that seemed important, all that mattered on that Friday night in Portlandâa town thatâs currently being shaped by infighting and racial justice protests, grieving under the weight of the coronavirusâwas having fun, an idea that, for the past year, has seemed so impossibly difficult. To even feel some semblance of this idea this past year has felt like an admission of privilege, a betrayal, almost, to those that are truly suffering through one of the strangest moments in modern history.