Blazers 'Need' Lift 'Best Fans In the League' Will Provide At Moda Center
The Trail Blazers' first-round series is shifting back home at the perfect time.
In conjunction with Governor Kate Brown and local public health officials, the team announced on Monday that Moda Center will increase its capacity for home playoff games to 8,000 fans – roughly the same number that watched the Denver Nuggets take Game 2 at Ball Arena. It's a long time coming for Portland, the last team in the NBA – other than the Oklahoma City Thunder, which barred patrons at Chesapeake Energy Arena all season – to welcome fans back to its home arena during the regular season.
C.J. McCollum has been vocal for weeks about his hopes to play in front of fans at Moda Center. Just a few days after he mused on Twitter about opening up select seats for vaccinated fans, the Blazers announced they were following the lead of other teams across the league by making some sections of the arena exclusively available to fans who've been vaccinated.
McCollum struck a bit more diplomatic approach following Monday's loss to Denver. Even so, he couldn't help but allude to the lift home fans provided other teams throughout 2020-21 that wasn't available to the blazers.
"We had a better record on the road than we did at home, and I think not having fans definitely played a factor in that," he said. "Looking at some of the teams, the Utah Jazz had a great season, they've been having 10,000 for basically half the year. Phoenix Suns have had fans. A lot of teams in the South have had fans."
Damian Lillard has also spearheaded the ad hoc charge of getting as many fans as possible back at Moda Center.
He was even broadly credited for fans being permitted to attend the last four home games of the regular season, lamenting on Twitter that the Blazers faced a home-court disadvantage compared to their competition. Less than 48 hours later, Portland announced Moda Center would open to fans for the first time in over a year.
Lillard's criticism, of course, didn't actually factor into the collective decision to allow fans to attend home games. In fact, rates of COVID-19 hospitalizations in Multnomah County came in lower than anticipated, moving the area from "Extreme Risk" level back to "Low Risk" – and easing gathering restrictions that align with those designations.
Similarly, it wasn't mounting pressure from Blazers players and fans that prompted Moda Center to extend its capacity for postseason games. That decision was made as Multnomah County, along with Baker, Curry, Grant and Tillamook counties, join 13 others who will be designated "Low Risk" on Thursday, meeting pre-prescribed rates of hospitalizations or infections.
Lillard still wants to see as many fans as possible at Moda Center. Why? He and his team need the support of "the best fans in the league" more than ever in the postseason.
"Hopefully we can get most of our fans in the building and not be cut short. I know that we one of the lower teams at the bottom, getting the least amount of fans," Lillard said. "We're kind of behind on doing that. Hopefully by the time Game 3 comes that number will be a little bit higher, because we got the best fans in the league. When our fans are in the building and that building is noisy and our fans are into it, we got one of the hardest buildings to win in. It's the playoffs – we're gonna need that."
Game 3 tips off at 7:30 p.m. (PST) on Thursday night.