I feel that this preseason has been quite successful. The experimentation by Nate has shown that the team is stronger than I even thought. 

Tonight the Blazers broke out with a huge depth chart. With Bayless able to play at the intensity he did in the Summer league and Joel slamming the boards as he did last year, the Blazers have a cushion for Sergio or Greg. The game brought out the intensity that Joel still has even though he is now in the second unit. 

The earlier games mostly show the same message, the Blazers are streaky. I have not seen the constancy that I can see with veteran teams like the Lakers. None the less the blazers play better than they play worse. The first loss against GS did not reflect a true loss because Roy did not play, and all prospects did play. They shot 37% so the Blazers where not doing well at that time, but they did have 22 assists and 50 rebounds. This shows that the fundamental game was solid, they just need the veterans to help pick them up.

The Jazz game was a legitimate loss because they gave it all they had. The problem was the Blazers did not play with confidence. Their shots were no different than Utah's at 46% but they got hammer at Rebounds and FREE THROWS. I talked about this in my last post and I have to bring it up again. The Blazers had 63% in that game, even though that is not horrible, compared to Utah's 92 percent it looks quite bad. The other problem they had was their fundamentals. The Blazers had 28 rebounds and 19 assists. Utah had 47 rebounds and 27 assists. This cannot happen if they want to beat strong teams like Utah. Greg has to become more comfortable with muscling guys like Boozer. The Blazers must show confidence if they want to get to the post season. 

To give you some perspective on the necessity of what Greg needs to do, here are the stats of the games the Blazers won:

Kings Opener-  Portland had 47 Reb. 

Hawks- Portland had 42 Reb. 

Kings- Portland had 41 Reb. 

Clippers- Portland had 42 Reb. 

The Loss (that counted):

Utah- Portland had 27 Reb. 

This season will prove to be one of the most exciting for the Portland Blazers. With a new dominant inside game, they will be able to control the boards. Hopefully with a focus on free throws the Blazers will be over 70 percent at all times. Tonight they were a measly 46% from the Free throw line. The Blazers do have an advantage to just about any other team in the NBA because all of our players can be as good as anyone. Depth will be a key issue this year because the team is so young, and hopefully the Blazers will come out on top and prepare for a post season.