Cardinal puts blame on late screen on Blazers

Brian Cardinal said the Blazers are the ones at fault. He noted that the game was already settled, but Mills was applying heavy man-to-man pressure defense to guard J.J. Barea in the backcourt as he was bringing the ball up the floor.

In that situation, normally no one guards anyone, the clock runs out and the teams go to their respective dressing rooms. Cardinal said if Mills doesn't pick up Barea full court, "I'm going to be standing on the court waiting for the clock to run out and the buzzer to sound.

"Patty, if they're mad, they should be mad at Earl [Barron] or [Nicolas] Batum or whoever else was in the game that should have called out that screen."

Cardinal has played 1 minute and 53 seconds in this series. He doesn't anticipate any repercussions from Blazers fans in Game 6 on Thursday.

"It doesn't matter to me," Cardinal said. "I've played a total of what, two minutes this series?

"If they're worried about me and my screens... "

Cardinal has some empathy for Mills.

"I wasn't trying to hurt him," he said. "I was just playing smart basketball, playing hard basketball. That's what they were doing."