especially if you add a little chocolate sauce, whip cream and some sprinkles.

Die by the three.

I’ve never liked that style of play, but it seems to be the road the blazers are taking more and more these days.

but even if “just” Rudy has an average shooting night, that game is tied going down the stretch.
I thought they had other stretches where they played great. In fact they were down by, what 15?, and they willed that come back. There was one possesion where I counted seven crisp passes which had several good looks, but the best look was after the 7th pass to a wide open….hmmm…I think it was Blake.
Just sayin’ even with all the missed opportunities I felt they were still in this ’till the last 30 seconds.
Last years team would of been out of this game by the half.

People need to get a grip.

I need to be honest, coming here is a lot less fun when fans can’t seem to do more than extrapolate from the last game played or understand that there is a healing and learning curve here.

It;s not just an act of will. f we throw him out there and raise our expectations and write longer and more vehement fanposts, Oden will immediately gain 12 inches of vertical lift and five years of game experience.

for me and I think Greg might start feeling like he can’t do any worse. I expect the next few games he will start to play more relaxed. The tension was really killed tonight with this game. He can finally stop feeling nervous. I feel like no matter what he does it can’t be any worse than how he did tonight.

It seems like he’s not attacking the basket unless it’s an alley oop from Sergio. I don’t mind him shooting 3’s but it seems like he’s getting too passive and depending on the 3-ball a little too much.

We all need to face the facts, the Rudy experiment isn’t working. I think it is about time that Coach McMillan benches Rudy and has Bayless be the first guard off the bench.

One one occasion, we had three guys (LMA, Travis, ?) running on one (Diaw) after Nash turned the ball over and then stopped. It ended with Travis luckily making a rather complicated reverse layup. On another occasion, Rudy stole the ball, then had nobody to pass it to and had to slow down. On yet another one, Nic stole the ball, and the whole situation ended with LMA trying to back down his defender instead of taking it to the rim with any speed. That needs a lot of work.

Something else that needs to be addressed (and is fairly easy to improve individually during every training): Shooting free-throws. 11-18 was once again not really good, like in the Golden State game.

And as Dave stated: Defensive efficiency. We are just giving up too many easy points in the paint, high-percentage jumpers, second-chance points, defensive rebounds, etc. Only three teams are worse than us in that regard at the moment.

Finally, here is the game flow from last night. We deserved to lose, as we had the lead only once for a very brief time. Everyone but Joel was pretty inefficient. Our lineups during the best stretches: Joel, LMA, Nic, Brandon, Steve. Joel, Frye, Brandon, Rudy, Steve (on the other hand, that second lineup also was on the floor when Phoenix’ final run to put away the game began).

Back in the early 90’s the PTB played a triple over-time game in Phoenix during the playoffs. I had to work so I set my vcr to record it. I ended up working a double shift and was exhausted when I got home. I already knew we won the game, by a score of something like 145-143, but as the hemorrhaging rose red and black fan I am, decided to watch the game at that time anyways. With about 5 minutes of game time left in the 2nd OT my VCR clicked off and the tape started rewinding. Talk about dissapoinment.

Truly one of the greatest PTB victories of all time nonetheless.

I agree with Brandon, it’s frustrating the team isn’t quite as good as these veteran teams yet, but they’ll get there.

Shaq seems inspired this season and the Blazers were playing a solid veteran team at home. Not to downplay a loss but ‘stuff’ happens.

I also agree with those who point out that depending on outside shooting is never a good strategy long term.

and while I’m a great Blazers fan – I DID NOT vote for Aldridge or the Greg.

While Lamarcus is a good forward, he’s certainly not a great one at this point of his career. I chuckled when I noticed that while the Greg was an option for center and Joel was not. Yao got my vote while Joel was my write in.

Naturally, Brandon got my vote with this season’s late game heroics and consistent ability to be a substantial influence whenever he’s on the court.

Back to Topic: Portland looked hesitant and scared out there at times. The players seem to have an inferiority complex against these three teams – Phoenix, LAL, and Boston.

I’m not worried. Part of the growing process.

I know you use DirecTV also, Dave, so it was prolly a universal problem.

Peeved me off sumthin’ fierce, as here I was getting up at 5am so I can watch me game, and then it cuts off before it was over. I had a feeling something like this might happen since I saw the recording was only an hour and 59 minutes long, but I hoped it would do that thing the longer recordings sometimes do where it keeps going after the ‘end’ time.

No such luck :-( First 9 minutes of a Blazer game I have missed in years :-(

Oh well, we lost. This isn’t a surprise against PHX at home. Oden couldn’t find a flow, the cheapie fouls turned into foul problems and the real fouls he had to give took him out of the game. That ok, it happens, and luckily hasn’t happened every game for him yet.

Lucky for us, sitting right there is a game against our favorites, the Sacrapimento Dingalings. At home, no less! Our schedule has been rough but they handed us the perfect bounce back game.

Stupid DVR DirecTV pooh heads. I hate missing the end of games, more than I hate missing the beginning and the middle of games even.

Mortimer

I did not see a lot of Bad Three Pointers – contested, very early in the shot clock, except for a few off offensive rebounds. Many seemed to come off the extra pass around the perimeter, caught and shot in rythm, and just went in and out or CLANK. I did not have too much problem with them.

Terry Porter did a nice job of substituting against us.Playing Amare at the 5 against Oden worked well. It will always be tricky for Oden, at least while he is conditioning himself.

The upshot was we ended up shooting only 34% for the half.

Dave, I’m convinced before writing every post you pull out your an old leatherbound book of obscure metaphors that’s been in your family for generations. “Hmm,” you say “How can I best explain the basketball game to the commoners… Ah, Robocop and Baskin-Robbins, perfect…”

That Blazers cant play team ball when playing against the fun-style basketball teams. Even Roy could not set anybody up yesterday. When Blazers played against the Warriors the did not have team chemistry, and the other team seems to have that chemistry by running the fast-break so easy.

When we play teams like Suns or the Warriors we play them kind of 1-on-1, and our 3 pointers seem to not fall.
When we play these teams it becomes a chaos for us. It seem like we cant dribble and cant drive, just everything disorganized.

I want to know why? Why cant look good against these teams.
I worry that when we make the playoffs one of these teams might blows us out of there.
Remember the Warriors and Mavericks series?

Being that Amare tends to intimidate the Blazers it was nice seeing someone who was not intimidated by him. However, it seems that Oden had a little too much respect for Shaq. I shall howl with delight when Oden dunks on Shaq for the first time. That will be the wallpaper on my desktop.

and one shared by the coaching staff….It will always be a sound statement when you make it….Live by it (without adjusted learning to make you the wiser) you die by it …which has already been mentioned above…..
      They have been competitive of late, putting up the 3’s and settling for what the defense gave them…..the problem is…the defense will always give this shot to you until you prove you can make them…..When you do, they adjust and you open up the inside game….when you don’t make them and the defense backs off, you have lost your edge on the inside game, as well…..
     So what to do?….have the ability to adjust your game plan in mid-stream…instead of sticking to the plan the entire game and hope your 3’s start falling……We don’t do that….(what does the opposition think you are going to do when a player drives the lane and the other 4 are standing on the 3 point line?)
    No variations are possible with this offensive line up…. and then throw in our continuing inability to get stops at the other end doesn’t give you a very good opportunity to win the game…..
  Good sound, outside shooting may win you a few games during the season, but strong “D” and with a flexible offense, will win you some playoff games and thus get you closer to a championship…….bite the bullet time is getting closer and closer …so the things that continually stick out as reasonable assumptions for losses need to be brought to the forefront….
     A case could be said for some of Oden’s fouls….that is ; better perimeter defense = less time’s he has to commit to the ball then back again to a dish off. Help your big men out and don’t rely on them to be the safety net all the time,,,,they can’t help you much if they end up on the bench with fouls,,,,

And we need to stop running our offense through Oden every single time. Whenever we lose Oden has the most negetive (-) stats. We gotta do what we do with Joel. Let the main scorers work and opponents will have to keep Oden out, that means easier opportunities for Roy to make layups, or a drop off pass to Oden when their big man tries to block

They had 8 guys in double figures… Muy goodo teamo.