The quick turnaround will give him an opportunity to show what he learned in game one. I also am concerned that the offense begins to hit its shots. On the road that gets tougher but against this team the mismatches you cite should yield good scoring.

We have to either slow Brooks or punish him on the other end. If Blake and Miller are not effective at the latter, maybe we should try Bayless at the former for a few minutes and see how it goes. Only a fallback option.

Perhaps this is a good time to change some things up and post up Andre against Brooks as well. It isn’t as if Houston has a lot of shotblockers to help out unless they double Andre early, and that leaves someone open.

I’m also looking for some pick and roll, get Greg the ball going to the hoop, where he doesn’t have to think about it, he just puts it in.

as Frye scored 22 pts (6/7 from 3) and grabbed 8 rebs as the Suns went to 2-0.

OKC, waiting for us, is 2-0 now as well.

Here is a simple way to chart how efficient our offense if working and how effective our defense is. It will highlight how important rebounding is to our team. This formula was developed by Bob Spear and Dean Smith and used for every UNC game Smith coached there. It focuses on two figures: Points Per Possession and Percentage Loss of Ball.
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total shots attempted + total free throws attempted + turn overs = Total Possessions.
Total Points divided by Total Possessions = Points Per Possession.

This is an indicator of how effective your offense is. A good PPP over .85 is good.
The Blazers have been at .76 and .72 respectively in our two games this season. This is where we want to hold other teams, in the low seventies.
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Next: total turnovers divided by total possessions = Percentage Loss of Ball
This gives you a measurement of how well you took care of the ball, and how well your defense played. It concerns itself with number of turnovers in relation to possessions. For example a team with 120 possessions and 20 turnovers is still doing better then a team with 100 possessions and 10 turnovers.
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So in one sense you could say Oden is keeping us in games. Without his rebounding and defense, we’d be looking at 0-2 and a 20 point loss to the Nuggets. We also need to be shooting more free throws. In two games each team has gone to the line more then us. I attribute this to our propensity for taking jump shots. This is a bad statistic to extend through out a season.

In our two games the PPP’s were: Blazers .76/ Rockets .69 and Blazers .72/ Nuggets .82

The PLB’s were Blazers 20%/ Rockets 12% and Blazers 5% and Nugs 6%

We had significant rebounding advantages in both games. In the first game our turnovers kept rebounding from putting us over the hump, the extra possessions would have made the game more comfortable, as our defense was forcing them into tough shots judging by their pathetic PPP. In the Denver game we appear to have played some pretty sound defense as well, .81 is nothing to be proud about, but .72 is pathetic. Our offense stinks frankly. We need far more possessions then the other team to be successful right now. We need these big rebounding margins because they help make up for the low percentage one on one shots we take.
But I disagree with those who say our defense is not up to par. Our defense is a bright spot right now, and a lot of that is attributable to our rebounding. If we don’t rebound we won’t win games, a PPP in the 70’s means we HAVE to lead in possessions by a large margin. If our PPP improves, rebounding could be the thing that makes us really great. Right now we need it to save our bacon.

i am still depressed over denver loss…. we gotta make up for that tonight.

1 the Blazers need to show they can win not only on the road but in Houston. I think mentally that place has something over them

2 I would like to see the Blazers follow through with the blowout unlike the last game they played so we can see Bayless get some work.

I’ve signed up for the broadband league pass free try out period.
I watched one game and it seems pretty good. If you don’t want to pay $89 bucks
you can at least watch the next two games. I get about 6000kbps download and it was pretty good. It looks like high def but only about 20 fps.

Much better than nothing!

Here’s hoping Joel and Greg devour Houston in the paint tonight. Hopefully Greg can bounce back from those awful free throws from last game.