So, I missed the game, due to the fact that I absolutely had to attend my Freshman workshop class (It was the last one, so no chance I could make it up)… and now I feel horrible about it. I just know that if I had been watching the game, Greg woulda made those free throws. So, we can’t hate Greg for missing them, lets just hate me instead.

I will. Every time.

Oddly enough I’m a little encouraged by the game. Our offense was horrid, and we still almost won. It sounds like our defense has improved from last year, that’s what I’m after. We had the most efficient offense in the league last year, that doesn’t just disappear. It will come back, perhaps not at that level, but to some degree, we didn’t lose any pieces. If we can win games against great teams without relying on our offense, that’s a step in the right direction. Of course I couldn’t watch most of the game so my thoughts are mostly hearsay, just seems if we had an offensive game like this last year we would have been blown out.

I was at the game, great seats. had a blast. Only problem with it. (I’m not saying we deserved to win, cause frankly 35% fg is just not gonna cut it) but the officials were terrible. Way too many fouls. Period. You could tell from the beginning it was gonna be physical and they were so inconsistent in what the called neither team really ever got in to a rythym.

The NBA where free throw contests happen

You know, I’m not incredibly devastated by the loss. Denver kept up the whole time and we shot ourselves in the foot. Yeah, the loss is on GO’s shoulders but lets just forget it. Everyone needs to practice their FT shooting, and lets get back out there and start winning again.

the battle in the paint? The rebounding? C’mon Nate!
They shot nine more free throws then us, we shot 41….. thats also a lot. We also out rebounded the Nuggets by nine or so, and there were stretch’s of the game where we had nearly double the rebounds they did, and yet the score was tied.
We shot 20 more field goals then the Nuggets and I am willing to be we were way ahead in total possessions as well. Now you can say the Nuggets “got to the hoop” and that is why they won. It’s at least why they shot a much higher percentage then us. But that again has to do with the offense we are running. It seems designed to get our players the worst possible shots, which is reflected in our pathetic field goal percentage.
As a basketball man schooled in the concepts of Dean Smith, even George Karl must know the Nuggest should have lost this game. If the Blazers are more efficient on offense getting higher percentage shots this game is a blow out. Unfortunately our offense is not designed, it seems, to get our players easy high percentage shots.

no but really Outlaw and Miller share some of that blame. In the grand scheme of things it was a good game to learn from and not that big of a deal. But then again come playoff time this very well could be a game that decides playoff positioning. You gotta take care of division rivals on your court. Anyway gotta love Websters tenacity but at the same time it would have been nice to have Batum pestering Mellow… Mellow has said before that he hates Nic.

Nate is too intransigent in his plan of offense. In order to get good looks for Oden (and Pryz) a specific set of plays needs to be devised to get Oden the ball where he can do the most with it. This will make the opponents bigs stay home on our bigs and give more space for Roy, Fernandez, etc.

Portand (and us Fans) must be ready to lose a few games in order to get Oden (and Pryz) involved in the offense. It will pay dividends later when it will be important (the playoffs). We can win now. To be champions you must invest a few losses to get much bigger wins.

I much rather be the eighth seed with a good offensive scheme than a three seed with offensive weaknesses (inability to score in the post): it didn’t work last year, why would anyone think it would work this year?

Oh. The foul on Oden. It occured before the ball reached Oden. Maritn either pulled his jersey or tried to hold back his arm and prevent Oden from catching the ball—the whistle was late and made everyone think the foul occured when or after Oden caught the ball.

that the refs didn’t have a preseason to get accustomed to game conditions. The game seemed to fast for them. By the third week they should be up to speed.

in the fourth quarter. Would have also been nice if he didn’t break up the rythm of the team by force feeding Blake back into the lineup for 3-4 minutes midway through the fourth quarter.

There was a unit on the floor that was holding a 5-7 point lead most of the fourth quarter, and Nate just break them up out of a timeout for no apparent reason.

I’m an external party (Clipper fan) so I never got to drink the Oden cool-aide, but I’m still not impressed with his offensive game.

To make things clear – I think he makes a big impact on defense, but that’s not what I am talking about here.

I remember the discussion with clinasian?(sp?) regarding Oden’s offensive game (or lack thereof) and he promptly pointed out there was no data and if you looked at preseason he was beastly.

Well…preseason is over, defensive rotations are more crisp and overall intensity has turned up.

My observations: He looks slow and uncoordinated out there.

His picks look clumsy and he’s too slow to pivot and roll. By the time he pivots and rolls out, ROY is pretty much already to the basket. He’s not going to beat any defenders like that.

“We had open shots, we just need to hit them.” So if we are shooting 20 footer’s all game and nothing goes in, and our % is in the thirties, we still go with that plan? When is this team gonna take the ball inside and score from inside out instead of the other way around?

but Nate should have shouldered the blame for the lose publicly and praised his team for its play—no matter how he felt about their performance.

and I almost fell asleep, if not for those Denver fans behind being VERY loud (why me?) I would have. At one point I looked up at the board and there had been 50 fouls called and the game wasn’t close to being over!!!! That was not quality basketball. Thank you refs for making it a nice boring basketball game.

OK, i’ve been loving Blazers Edge for the past year and it feels time to join in. So after watching last season and the first couple games of this season I find myself wondering about the Blazers potential future success being limited by Nate’s approach to offense?
Maybe others can help me out. I may be missing the subtlety in Nate’s offensive schemes? I hear alot about improving 9 games a season and it does seem like Nate has been a great developmental coach. But I also think some of this has been do to great personnel additions on the team. And I wonder if the coaching that got Portland to this stage is the same coaching that will lead to greater success?
I liked that Nate said he wanted to learn from his substitutions at the end of the game. And I realize that the blazers are integrating new people this year. But to me, we got very outcoached the last two games. And we have so much talent and the movement in the offense seems so stolid. I don’t know why we don’t do more pick and rolls etc. I look at Andre Miller and his capacity to open up the floor and I get excited about the poosibilities, like the second quarter in game one.
But I wonder if I’m missing some wisdom in the offense that I just don’t see? To me winning isn’t the only thing, it’s being able to watch a team that plays beautifully. I found myself watching Rick Adelman coaching and missing those days.

There has been a lot of speculation about Rudy playing PG or playing a Roy/Rudy back court at some point in the future, with lots of questions about how Rudy would do against smaller, quicker PGs. That is whay it was it was interesting that Rudy was matched up against one of those smaller, quicker PGs for most of this game.

The Good:
*Exploiting the height mismatch. Rudy did a good job shooting over the smaller Lawson and showed that he can effectively utilize his height advantage.
*Isolation defense. In 1-on-1 situations, Rudy did a very good job at staying in front of Lawson and using his length to contest shots.
*Driving to the basket. McMillian said that the plays called for Rudy to handle the ball more this year, and Rudy did just that. Rudy drove to the basket, hit shots off the dribble, and drew fouls. Those are all things that he has proved he can do in Europe, but that he really didn’t do very often last year.

The Bad:
*Dishing. Often Rudy would drive to the basket and then dish the ball off to the bigs. Unfortunately, his passes to the bigs were a bit wild and they had trouble catching those passes. This resulted in a turnover and nearly ended up causing a couple more. Rudy has to keep in mind who he is passing to (especially if it is Przybilla) and make sure he gives them passes that they are capable of catching.
*Pick-and-roll defense. Rudy’s normal strategy for pick-and-roll defense (beating the ball-handler to the spot and staying between him and the pick) is really only effective against players who are slower than he is. In this game he ended up getting hit pretty hard by some picks and loosing contact with the ball-handler that he was supposed to be guarding. Eventually he just started going under every pick and forcing Lawson to shoot the mid-range jump shot instead of letting him penetrate. That isn’t a terrible option for defense, but it certainly isn’t ideal either. If Rudy is going to start guarding PGs more often in the future, he is going to have to come up with a better strategy for defending them on pick-and-rolls (this may also require some cooperation from the bigs who are guarding the pick setters).