Portland Trail Blazers coach Terry Stotts says his team cannot afford to dwell on their 116-112 loss to Denver Nuggets on Sunday night.

The Blazers went into the clash after back-to-back wins and looked on course to move 3-1 ahead in the Western Conference Semifinals series as they opened up a six-point lead at half-time.

The Nuggets fought back though and won the third quarter by 13 points, Portland responded themselves but were unable to close the gap as Denver tied the best-of-seven series.

Two of the remaining three games will take place in Denver, and Stotts says his side must recover from any disappointment if they are to continue their bid for the NBA Championship.

“It is disappointing,” said Stotts, as reported by Oregon Live, of the Game 4 result.

“You go up 3-1 and you have a lot of momentum and obviously that would be a great position to be in, but they’re a good team.

“They came out and played well. We had a bad third quarter and that kind of made the difference. We made a good comeback but now it’s a three game series. Now it’s 2-2 and we move on.”

Game 5 takes place in Denver on Tuesday and the two teams return to Oregon on Thursday for Game 6. The winners of the series will face either defending champions Golden State Warriors or Houston Rockets in the Western Conference Finals.

GSW hold a 2-1 series lead ahead of Game 4 of their series on Monday. The Rockets are 1.83 to level the series and win for Golden State is 2.00.