PORTLAND, Ore. – Brandon Roy scored 22 points and the Portland Trail Blazers rallied to beat the Philadelphia 76ers 97-72 on Sunday for their league-leading 13th straight win.
It is the second-longest winning streak in Blazers history. Portland won 16 straight in the 1990-91 season.
Trailing 63-59 in the third quarter, the Blazers (18-12) went on a 20-0 run over 8:21.
Travis Outlaw sealed the game with an acrobatic dunk, bringing his arm around 180 degrees over a defender and stuffing the ball to make it 82-66. He finished with 12 points, as did James Jones. Steve Blake had 11 points for the Blazers.
Andre Iguodala had 24 points for the 76ers, and Andre Miller added 17 points and 11 assists. The loss snapped a three-game winning streak.
The youngest team in the NBA, Portland started its run with a Dec. 3 victory at Memphis after going 5-12 to start the season. Ten of the team’s 13 victories have come at the Rose Garden, where the Blazers are 15-3.
Gordan Giricek, who was traded to the 76ers on Saturday by the Utah Jazz for Kyle Korver, was with the team but didn’t play. Giricek had fallen out of favor with Jazz coach Jerry Sloan. He averaged 4.3 points in 22 games for Utah this season and has a career average of 9.8 points in six seasons.
The Blazers led by as many as five points in the first half until Louis Williams’ 3-pointer for Philadelphia tied it at 25. The 76ers could not pull ahead and Portland re-took the lead with Channing Frye’s layup and Sergio Rodriguez’s 3-pointer.
Philadelphia was undeterred, going on a 14-2 run – capped by Iguodala’s dunk – to lead 45-36 at the half.
Miller, who went 0-for-6 from the floor in the first quarter, had 11 points in the second for the 76ers.
Philadelphia pushed its lead to as many as 11 in the third quarter, but the Blazers chipped away, closing to within 61-59 on Blake’s 3-pointer.
After Williams made a layup for the 76ers, Jones made three straight free throws for Portland to narrow it to 63-62 at the end of the third quarter – the first points of the 20-0 run.
Outlaw opened the fourth with a 20-foot jumper to put Portland back in front. Roy’s left-handed dunk gave the Blazers a 74-63 lead.
Roy, last season’s NBA Rookie of the Year, has scored 20-plus points in 10 of the Blazers’ games during the streak, and has been honored as the NBA’s player of the week twice during the span.
The current streak surpasses the 12-game winning streak the team had in 2001-02. Current 76ers coach Maurice Cheeks was head coach for Portland at the time.
Notes: The Blazers honored team founder Harry Glickman during the game as part of a season-long celebration of the team’s history. Glickman, who retired in 1994, said he was encouraged by the way the young Blazers were bringing back fans that had fallen away during the so-called “Jail Blazers” era. “I think they’re pointed in the right direction,” Glickman said. “They’ve done a good job in turning it around.” … Rodney Carney made his fourth straight start for the 76ers.
AP-ES-12-30-07 2039EST
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