Let's Panic

Am I retarded (please only use this post as an example)?

That clause proves you are the exact opposite of retarded.

How about Roy as a 6th man to give the 2nd unit a boost?

Only joking. I know someone would have thought I was serious.

We shot terribly. If we hit 4 more shots and 3 more free throws, it’s a tight game throughout. If.

The good news is there aren’t any first game jitters after the first game.

Things to practice: Easier points. Hit your open jumpers (Rudy can skip this one). Oh, and Travis got the 15+ attempts he wanted all summer. And made more than 50%.

It was nice of Brandon to start producing when it no longer mattered, but c’mon how many layups can you miss? I guess I’m just especially miffed about this game because I felt like they weren’t ready to play. Blame it on the coach, blame it on the “leaders,” they weren’t ready. GO looked scared, Blake gave nothing as the starter and our entire bench got outplayed by Lamar Odom. Forgive me, I’m not panicking, I just got back from watching my team get beat down from start to finish and had to sit next to an entire table of obnoxious laker fans who talked crap and tried to start fights with people all night. Sad thing is, every blazer fan in there had to shut up because we had nothing to say.

the show must go on. there’s no stoping it now. dig your heels in and give as well as we take.

………. I think the ride home is going to suck.

scared?…..(shaking my head)….maybe. in awe? most certainly.

We’re not ready. :(

Lakers are a better team. And there is a reason they went to the finals.

Maybe that will change as the season goes on and they gain experience, chemistry, a rotation, etc….

But for now, who really thought they’d WIN that game? Against the defending conference champs, with the reigning MVP, on the road….starting a rookie center. The second youngest team in the league, in the Staples Center on Nat’l Tv on opening night?

So they have a lot to improve on. I know they’ll bounce back from this. We have to protect our home court, and get some on the road, and we’ll be fine.

Meanwhile, I’m a lot less nervous about Oden having seen the post-game interviews, etc.

Have faith, Blazer fans.

i know we have athletic players, but we just don’t run too well.

That’s not going to work. I think this game just confirms a lot of what people saw durring summer league. Forget about Roy and Aldridge, they will be fine. The thing I’m concerned about is the lack of a strong perimeter defender.

Oh, we also need someone to punch Lamar Oden in the face.

They were nervous and tentative and settled for jump shots until the 4th quarter. The offense wasn’t flowing and shots weren’t falling. There was too much dribbling and one on one.

The L*kers knew exactly how to guard us and they have the personal to do it. Defend the screen and roll (I hate watching the Blazers use the screen and roll on 10 consecutive plays and have it fail every time), and clog the middle. They dared us to take the outside shot and they kept Oden from getting deep position.

We got some open jumpers that just didn’t go in the hole. Bad shooting night. But we were also frazzled and completely discombobulated at times. We had 3 or 4 shot clock violations or bad shots with 1 second left. We couldn’t any easy buckets and it seems like every time we got in transition we dribbled it away.

Outlaw played well on offense, but was just atrocious on defense. I know that the L*kers and Kobe in particular are very good offensively, but ouch anyway.

I can still chant for Rudy. He’s no rookie. Everyone else looked like a rookie. Rookies aren’t the sole member of their team to play a real game. Ru-dy! Ru-dy! Ru-dy!

Oden…….okay…..you couldn’t ask for more bad luck. He didn’t look good, but no one else did either. The injury…..if there is one positive thing you could say about it……well, it was a freak thing. Landing on a guy’s foot doesn’t mean that you’re fragile or injury prone. I think his lack of conditioning contributed to rolling that ankle. He just didn’t have good footwork or any quickness.

That all being said, it’s just one game and it was against one of the best teams in the league on their court. The team just needs to turn their nervous energy into Rudy like energy on both sides of the ball.

      Our offense & defense sucks !
     but most importantly, it’s only one game on the
road against the team I HATE the most in Sports !!!
We’ll be back.

COINCAST SUCKS !!!! GO BLAZERS !!!!

I’m not going to lie. Centers, foot injuries. I do not like those words together. The worst part is that Oden seemed so preoccupied about not getting injured. I feel for the guy.

Did you see that stuff Oden had on Bynum?

It is easy to point fingers…but Portland just wasn’t making any shots in the first quarter, and that other team that will go unnamed played great defense…(and had way too man y easy baskets) We were our own reason, we could never get over the hump. Hard to be successful when nobody can score…

I would have liked to see Roy get into a grove when it mattered.

Oh well.

At this moment the extent of Odens injury is unknown and certainly whatever the reality becomes will have impact. I’m hoping for the best as I would expect all Blazer fans. But beyond Oden, as ugly and painful as this loss was, perhaps it’s exactly what this team needed. Expectations were so high. Can we look at this loss like a dose of medicine? Assuming Oden is alright nothing has really changed for this team outside of we didn’t play a good game against the defending Western Conference Champions on opening night. Right out of the gate this really seems like a time when we need to pull together as a team and as a fanbase. This team got a hard dose of reality but it’s how we react that will matter.

im not worried

lets be real for a second. we were all hyped up that the blazers were going to be a great team this year without having really proven anything yet, last year was fun but we didnt make the playoffs. we were playing the reigning western conference champs who are favored to win it all this year. did u really expect a win? OF COURSE U DID THATS WHY WERE FANS. but realistically we saw what a championship team looks like tonight and were building towards that and hopefully we can get there someday. we dont have to play the lakers every game of the season so no need to panic, we can still make the playoffs and see waht happens then.

i just can’t put in finger on it…

and Wheels was sounding like it was the absolute end of the world, and there was no good left in man kind. Now THAT guy hits the panic button easily.

webster was sorely missed
oden was being mauled, making it hard to get off to an easy start
bayless is fearless, but still needs as much work as anybody
roy, shot wasn’t falling
aldridge, jumper wasn’t falling
outlaw, i hate every shot he takes, but alot of them went in
rudy, played great
sergio, did nothing! tried to throw one alley-oop and turned it over, and got dunked on

But others apparently are.

Man what a disappointing game. Maybe I was worked up by all the hype, I don’t know. The Lakers were the more poised team last night. It was clear that they are championship material, and they took advantage of the fact that this is the first game with our new guys. Man, the schedule maker in the NBA must really want to punish the Blazers for some reason.

We were jittery at first, which affected our shots. Had our shots fallen, we would’ve had confidence and it would’ve been more competitive.

I agree with what I heard on the radio this morning, that we can’t rely on Oden..we shouldn’t. I’m going to be skeptical, for my own psychological health, until he strings together several good games.

Here’s a big problem:
Both our power forwards seem to want to play small forward.
Channing and LaMacus have fallen in love with outside jumpshots instead of taking it to the hole.
This will not due.
Yes, LA’s interior defense was very good lastnight, but our guys have to be able to get in there. HAVE TO.

if he was in there to start

Missing my chance for great tickets to see the game, or taking part in the gameday thread.

So many negative nancy whiny baby butts in here when things ain’t goin’ right! Man!

We lost. It sucks in game 1, it sucks in game 57 but it’s just a loss. ODEN ROLLED HIS ANKLE ON SOMEONE ELSE. That happens to ANYONE, and luck would have it it just happened to happen to our franchise center who already deals with injury concerns because of a wrist and knee thing. If that makes someone injury prone, the entire NBA is injury prone.

Everyone looked way nervous and in certain cases played worse than we’ve ever seen then play— we KNOW they are good players who all collectively had a bad night since we have SEEN them play consistently much better. We’ve seen LMA not be so soft, or Roy so easily rattled. Why it had to happen on the 1st game of the season against the Lakers… well, maybe it’s not a “why” but the reason itself…

It ain’t Nate; he didn’t gameplan suckiness. This is the players allowing themselves to get too easily rattled from the very first punch thrown and to not give themselves a chance.

We love our youth and we’ll be able to keep them around for a long time… this is one of the downsides to it. It’s a loooong way till April however, and I still got 51 wins predicted.

We need Oden back, but we got a good team who just sucked for a night. It’ll be more than okay in the long run.

Mortimer

So many negative nancy whiny baby butts in here when things ain’t goin’ right! Man!

Reality is, we’re gonna get blown out some games, and opening night in LA is as likely as any other time.

Does he have glass ankles? Come on Jay Jensen, wrap those suckers up! Then he’ll fall on Fisher, that’ll learn him.

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i thought the plan was to play batum.wtf. we are just not on the lvl of these contenders. watching the game it doesnt seem like we even have any kind of rotations set and we have a bunch of pieces that just dont fit yet. i always like seeing aldridge and fry out there together. i was serious awhile back when i said trade pritchard and let him steal from other good teams in the west for a while. once we blow our wad hopfully we wont need him for awhile and he might do more good for us in the east. after last nite im thinking mabey we should try to steal some of our divisions players with our $ this offseason and i wouldntmind delegating greg to 2nd string for awhile and plan on (keeping him) but developing a plan to create our championship team without him by finding another complementary big. or 2( bynum odom? id rather have lebron but…) and if he stays healthy great, if not no big deal. with all the pressure and scrutinization i think we are on some level making the issue worse or creating one that isnt necessarily there yet and relieving as much pressure might be the best thing we can do for his development. the best thing about last nite is that we set the bar really low so that we are sure to get better.

im out for the day but seriously nate is done, he fails in my book. At the beginning of the game i texted twiggs saying “if we lose, im blaming Outlaw”. Well we lost and I blame Travis. But I have to reevaluate that because Travis did nothing outside of his norm. He played garbage defense, was hot offensively but doesnt move off the ball and ruined the starting lineup’s offense. We all knew that was going to happen. Batum would have just existed. He wouldn’t have been a super PLUS but perhaps his presence would have encouraged lma and broy to shoot themselves out of their offensive funks. He would have played better perim. defense and at least stop some of the momentum . The lakers ran a lot last night, and Batum would have gotten back on d much faster than oden and outlaw, the perpetual, get-back-on-d-last-ers.

All in all the reevaluation has convinced me that with the massive quantity of talent the Portland trail blazers posses we must also posses a leader/coach who will qualify the talent to the best of it’s ability.

Nate is not the one. Its his fault. I blame Nate and its become plainfully obvious that he is not a good coach for the PTB if we want to win a championship.

Sophia

No team that is going to make noise in the playoffs gets worked like that in their first game. Sorry. But the future is still bright, it’s just going to take longer than we all thought.