The Portland Trail Blazers play host to the San Antonio Spurs at Moda Center on Saturday.

The Spurs (32-34) pulled off a huge victory on Friday, beating the Sacramento Kings, 123-114. While that's a win they expect to get, it's critical when you see that they entered that matchup in the midst of a five-game losing streak. That poor stretch has put their playoff hopes in jeopardy, sitting just three games up on the New Orleans Pelicans in 11th. The good news is that the season is winding down quickly, and only a couple more wins will guarantee them a spot in the play-in tournament. This is certainly a club no one wants to see in that tourney, either, possessing dangerous players like DeMar DeRozan and Dejounte Murray.

The Trail Blazers (38-29) picked up a huge win themselves on Friday, beating the Los Angeles Lakers, 106-101. They were actually tied with the Lakers for the six-seed in the west before that, and that's arguably the most important seeding around. That's the final spot to avoid the dreaded play-in tournament, and that sort of result puts a huge gap between the two teams. It was really no surprise when you look at the form of those teams, though, with Portland winning six of their last seven games in total and Los Angeles freefalling down the standings. That's the club we've been waiting to see, and it directly correlates with Jusuf Nurkic finally getting a full workload. Everyone knows C.J. McCollum and Damian Lillard are the MVPs of this team, but Nurkic's presence can't be overlooked.

These teams have played twice this season, splitting those two matchups. With that said, the Trail Blazers have won three of their last four games over the Spurs in this series.