The Portland Trail Blazers wrapped up their scrimmage schedule without winning in three games and dealing with various lineup adjustments due to injury. The scrimmages only showed glimpses of the team’s potential, raising questions about how Portland will be fair in its first seed game against the Memphis Grizzlies. In his post-game interview after Tuesday’s loss, head coach Terry Stotts said his team is ready for Friday’s showdown with Memphis:
“We are ready. I mean there is no question, we are ready.”
Stotts then discussed how scrimmages helped the team, but also noted that practices were probably more “beneficial” for Portland:
“I think the best thing was to go out and play against someone else, to play at the speed of the game. I think our practices were probably more beneficial than our practice games, but playing long minutes, playing a stretch of nine, ten minutes from a conditioning point of view was probably the most important thing for us. We had a lot of practice time and did a lot of things that we wanted to do in practice, so the games focused more on just playing games. ”
As for the impending lineup decisions, Stotts said he will adopt a “game-by-game” mentality similar to the playoffs:
“If we treat these games as basically playoff games, some of the rotations, some of the substitutions will be situational. I can’t say it will be an established rotation for all eight games. I think whatever it takes to win those games. “
You can watch the full Stotts interview below:
