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The bus carrying the San Antonio Spurs to the Moda Center for Monday night's playoff game against the Portland Trail Blazers was late after colliding with a TriMet bus.

(Josh Behrends/Twitter)

Give TriMet's No. 35 credit for Monday night’s first big defensive play against the San Antonio Spurs.

According to reports from social media, the driver of the Spurs team bus made a possibly illegal turn from the transit mall and collided with a No. 35 TriMet bus at Northwest Fifth Avenue and Everett Street in Portland.

The bus was ferrrying the Spurs team to the Moda Center for Game 4 of the Western Conference Semifinals against the Portland Trail Blazers.

Blatant foul!

“It was very minor, no injuries,” said Roberta Altstadt, a TriMet spokeswoman.

Josh Behrends was on the No. 35 hit by the Spurs bus. At the time, he said he didn't realize who was on the other bus. "Right before the bus hit us, people were booing on our bus," he said via Twitter. "So I didn't realize it at the time, but others on the bus sure did!"

He snapped a photo of the collision and posted it to his Twitter account before racing to barely catch another No. 35 a block away.

Of course, some TriMet drivers hoped the minor fender bender was a sign of things to come at the Moda Center on Monday night.

Check out this alert that went out to drivers before the game:

Down 3-0 and on the verge of elimination, the Blazers can use all of the help they can get.

Tough day for TriMet. At one point, Oregon's largest transit agency was sweating about a MAX outage that threatened to prevent tens of thousands of Blazers fans from using light rail to get to the game.

Update: Here is TriMet's official version of how the collision unfolded:



TriMet bus operator Todd B. was driving the line 35-Greeley bus last night when he noticed the San Antonio Spurs team bus adjacent to him on NW Fifth. Todd mentioned it to his riders, who good naturedly "booed" the team. Before Todd had turned right onto NW Everett, the Spurs driver was motioning to Todd that he needed to turn right, which is not allowed from the left travel lane. Todd turned onto Everett and was stopped in traffic. The Spurs bus then made an illegal right turn from the auto travel lane onto Everett and sideswiped the stopped TriMet bus. The Spurs driver motioned to Todd that if he could just move 5 feet, he could pass and continue on. Todd had no place to move his bus to allow the Spurs to continue on, plus, they had just hit TriMet's bus and needed to exchange information. To speed things along, the Spurs Coach then got out and was telling Todd to move the bus because the team was supposed to be at the Rose Garden! When Todd finished his shift for the night, he went to his other job, a security guard at the Rose Garden, where he watched the Blazers beat the Spurs! The "foul" performed by the Spurs bus may have helped turn the tide for the Blazers!

-- Joseph Rose