One word sums up the Blazers latest game for me…Frustration!

There I was all psyched up for this latest test for the Blazers to see if they are really making a push towards being an elite team perhaps even as early as this year.  My expectations are a good game, hopeful for at least a moral victory of the Blazers putting forth a good showing and not allowing themselves to be intimidated in a down to the wire game, perhaps even the slightest chance of getting a win.  For the first quarter it looks as if things are going as expected.  Oden throwing it down, Roy making plays, Batum hitting a corner 3, Aldridge looking pretty decent….there are those lapses in transition, and when did Rondo become such a 3-point threat that he needed a defender in his pocket at half court?  Oh well, I’m sure Nate will get these things ironed out at the quarter or at worst make some half-time adjustments.

And then…well, somehow the Blazers decided that although they had been playing tit-for-tat with the champs so far, who were they kidding?  And almost every person on the Blazers sideline proceeded to do their utmost to make the Celtics look as good as possible.

The Zebras also decided about the same time, that yes Portland was most definitely the inferior team, and the better team should get 90% of the calls.  It’s hard to say how much of an effect the officiating had on the end result of the game, but I do think it is fair to say that it certainly helped sway things Boston’s way.  Had it been called consistently it certainly would not have been the laugher it turned out to be.  Every time it seemed as the Blazers might get some momentum of some sort, there was a call or no-call that effectively squelched any such hope.  There were bad calls both ways and my Rose-city colored glasses and the fact that things were going so poorly probably colored my vision even more but, YIKES.  Rudy’s 3 wiped out on a BOGUS up and down call (which Steve Blake replicated later in the game and was apparently not a travel then).  I get that home teams get more calls (as well as the aggressive team), but how frustrating is it that the decidedly more physical can get away with uncalled hard fouls, moving picks, miscellaneous bumps, grinds, holds.  Meanwhile the Blazers get called for touch fouls, handchecks, blocks and Paul Pierce flopping as Bayless barely touches him trying to get over a pick.  It was nice to see the refs start to even things out in the early fourth quarter until they got scared that the Blazers might actually get close.  At some point in the late 3rd I recall seeing a free-throw graphic, readings something like PTB 8 attempts, Boston 26.

/ Ref vent over

As a team the Blazers made several critical errors regardless of what the refs or Boston was doing.  Most glaring of all was of course all the ridiculously easy run-outs that went undefended.  I realize that the Blazers thrive on offensive rebounding, but they were spending way too much time trying to steal the ball in the backcourt after the Celtics had already claimed possession.  Everybody was doing this, and it was leaving the 1 or 2 players that even thought of getting back to play defense out to dry.  What was most frustrating about this was it never got solved at any time while the Celtics starters were in the game.  The Blazers continually got beaten down court (several times cherry picked) by slow-mo Ray Allen and whatever other Celt decided to join him for an easy lay-up

Live by it die by it I guess…but you would think some people would actually shoot it!  Rudy of course got some up, Boom-boom hit one, and anybody else, anybody (besides the one shot Frye didn’t air ball)?  Yeah, the 3 point threat was completely missing last night.  When Boston does not have to respect your 3 point threats they can have a defensive party in the lane, and they certainly took advantage of that.  It wasn’t that there weren’t open shooters but the Blazers tonight did an absolutely atrocious job of swinging the ball to the open man.  The number of offensive possessions where the ball was not contained to one side of the floor could probably be counted with one hand.

The pick and rolls were absolutely dreadful, credit Boston’s schemes a bit I guess.  But the guards were horrible about getting the ball to the roller when they were open, and the rollers got bad about catching it if it did get thrown their way.  Very sloppy and frustrating as were the usually money dump off dimes that Roy and Sergio usually get that went bouncing harmlessly out of bounds or into Boston’s hands.  I recall in particular one nice pass Roy made to Aldridge when he drew 3 defenders that Aldridge just fumbled off his hands out of bounds instead of throwing it down easily.

Ok, on to the wonderfulness of player breakdowns!

Steve Blake ~ Nice and steady Steve Blake was a nice and steady non-factor and non-threat on either end of the court.  I guess he got some assists early when the Blazers were playing like this year’s Blazers, but ugh!  I’m sure he will be trying to forget his performance in this one as quickly as possible.  Of the 3 PG’s that played last night he certainly had the worst game.

Brandon Roy ~ looked good early, like to see him talking smack to Pierce and backing it up. I would have liked to see him back it up for the whole game however.  For the first time I think ever when I’ve seen him, it looked like he checked out of the game about mid-way through the 3rd quarter.  The Celtics beat him up whenever he went inside, and to be honest he never really looked good after he came out in the first after KG undercut him.

Batum ~ He played like a rookie tonight…started off looking promising with that early corner 3 that he hit, but that was the only highlight that Batum would have for the evening. It was a real stinker of a game for him, unfortunately.  He had several mental errors on defense, most notably leaving Ray Allen wide open to go double someone who didn’t even have the ball.  Also very surprisingly he was as guilty about not getting back on defense as anyone was.

Aldridge ~ Following Roy’s cue Aldridge started out well; was matching KG bucket for bucket early.  Unfortunately following Roy’s cue again he kind of disappeared.  We’ve started to get used to him be aggressive and take that sweeping jump hook or fingeroll into the lane.  He did it once in the first quarter, and then from there on out relegated himself to shooting contested fade-aways.  He played pretty good one-on-one defense on KG, but he didn’t rebound and was the primary culprit at not getting back to prevent easy buckets.  No way that a guys as fast as he is should be that lackadaisical about getting back.

Greg Oden ~ Hey guess what? He started out well and then fizzled.  But I don’t think we can say there was anything necessarily that surprising out of Greg last night, he rebounded, played decent defense and didn’t seem to be any more out of sorts than he is on other nights when he is struggling.  He did manage to collect his first foul-out of the season, but I would have liked to see them be harder fouls.  Methinks a broken eye-socket for KG perhaps?

Sergio ~ He played better than Blake by my estimation, but not by much.  He got all the way to the cup and layed it in 3 times (Hint to other Blazers, Boston’s interior defense is not as good as the rest of you are making it look!).  On the negative side he was also guilty of guarding Rondo at the half court line, gambled too much in the backcourt, and at times just dribbled down the whole shot clock (which Nate benched him for).  To be fair to Sergio, it is hard to pass to the open man when nobody is working to get open (Roy standing at the wing for the entire shot clock happened more than once).

Rudy ~ Rudy got taken out of the game tonight, he has probably never played against a team as physical as the Celtics ever.  There were a couple times it looked as if he would get things going but both got reversed by whistles.  His defense on Ray was not horrible, but then again I’ve always thought Allen to be a bit overrated.  The only reason he gets by guys is because he is such a good shooter.  I’m also not sure about him barking at Channing, on one hand I like it because it seems like on nights like last night the Blazers need a more vocal leader than Roy.  On the other hand calling out teammates like that while on the court in the middle of the game usually doesn’t help matters.

Outlaw ~ well, he didn’t give up.  Granted he got a lot of his buckets in garbage minutes, but aside for some typical Outlaw mistakes he just played his game.  Pretty decent defense and was aggressive on the offensive end.  One of exactly 3 Blazers that would get a passing grade from me on the night.

Channing Frye ~ should have been whisked off the floor immediately after giving Leon P-O-W the and-1 play.  When Channing is confident and aggressive he can be a decent offensive weapon for spreading the floor.  When he is not there is no reason to have him out there.  He consumes too much Nyquil while playing “defense” and managed to make me think about voting for POW as an All-star.  Turnovers, air balls, horrific defense, missed opportunities from nice setups from Spaniards.  Frye was never mentally in this game and it was by far his worst of the season, but he still managed to log some serious minutes (even before garbage time) more on that later.

Joel ~ managed to get a passing grade last night.  He made his shots, played good defense, tried to be vocal and get the rest of the Blazers together.  Obviously Roy is the quiet leader of the Blazers, but it seems to me that on some nights the Blazers need a more vocal guy as I already mentioned.  Joel seemed to try to fill that roll last night, but I just don’t know if that works for the Blazers.  Yeah he’s great at what he does well, and I’m sure his teammates love and respect him for it but he just doesn’t strike me as the leader type to be really able to carry out that roll.

Bayless ~ Well lookie here who made an appearance.  In reality Bayless was the only real bright spot the Blazers can take from the game.  I’m sure nobody thought he would be intimidated and he surely wasn’t.  He was aggressive on offense, knocked down some shots, got to the line, played decent defense (still needs to work on his set-ups and passing a bit, see Rudy lob), but overall a very encouraging game for him.  Against physical teams the Blazers do need another guy besides Roy to aggressively attack the rim, and maybe Jerryd will start to work his way into that roll sooner rather than later.

Diogu ~ didn’t do anything memorable either good or bad and therefore should have been getting all of Frye’s minutes as far as I can tell.

I kind of hate to go here but I feel that I must…

Coaching ~ well it looked like Nate had his troops ready for about the first 10 minutes of the game, but playing arm-chair coach after that is too easy.  I realize you can’t actually make the players get back on defense, and I’m sure he mentioned it to them on more than one occasion but the message never got through.  And for some reason he was more than ok with leaving the guilty parties out there to continue loafing back.

The Frye situation…need I say more?

The gameplan…I’m not really sure what the gameplan from Nate actually was, but it seemed to me that the Celtics were doing exactly what the Blazers should have been doing offensively (running out and trying to get fast-break or early offense), and the Blazers were doing exactly what the Celtics wanted them to do instead (playing a plodding half court style with one-on-one and little ball movement).

Substituting ~ To his credit Nate did do some reaching and it paid off a little bit with Jerryd , but for the most part he stuck to his usual rotations regardless of what the players were doing out on the floor.  Getting beat by 20 in the 3rd throw some weird combination out there just to see if something good happens please!

All of these things are minor quibbles however, and can be overlooked.  The one thing that was extremely disappointing to this fan was the fact that Nate gave up.  He more or less threw the “scrubs” out for garbage time for the entire 4th quarter and I guess started thinking about the Toronto game.  That’s fine, they were down by 25 after all and you want to get guys like Bayless some minutes.  Hey wait a second, Outlaw is going off, Bayless is doing some stuff, Celtic’s lead is down to 13, Doc wants a timeout, KG is upset, Celtics starters are going back in, still a full 7 minutes left, maybe the Blazers against all odds can make a game of it.  Nate is going to get Roy back out there to be and maybe Aldridge for Frye before Frye screws up again, and, and….oh, never mind, despite the fact that KG and Doc were worried about the outcome of the game Nate just conceded defeat. What kind of message does that send to the team?

Also does it concern anyone else the way the Blazers so far are getting bullied by more physical teams this year?  Utah loss, both Phoenix games, Boston….it really seams that the Blazers allow physical teams to take their will to fight and attack away from them.  They get the Blazers to revert to an all jump shooting team, and they obviously suffer heavily when that happens.  Bayless might be a big help towards combating this in the long run, but he is not ready on a nightly basis to provide that.  Hopefully it’s just a case of youth and will go away as the team matures.

And….WHOOOSAH!  

I feel a bit better now; it was after all only one game.  The Blazers will get things together and come out and play much better against the Raptors I’m sure.  For anybody that bothered to read all of this I applaud you.  I feel kind of bad for as heavy as I laid into the Blazers heavy on this one, but it is frustrating when it’s a national spotlight game and the Blazers laid a major egg instead of showing people what they can do.  Let’s get that maturity speeded up, go Blazers!

Cheers fellow Blazersedgers!