a few quibbles:

• Shooting 3s has a positive correlation with winning. There is nothing wrong with shooting 3s if you have good shooters taking them. Sure, there will be games where they aren’t going in and you might lose, but it will also win you games you would have lost if you were relying on mid-range stuff. Portland, in particular, should continue to shoot 3s because offensive rebounding often leads to some of the most open looks, and offensive rebounding is a big strength for the Blazers. So, keep shooting 3s.

• I too thought this was a really good game from Greg. I’m interested that you think in 3 years he’ll put up 30 in this type of game. I have trouble seeing that— partly because he’s still awkward offensively— though he had a couple good moves tonight— and partly because his teammates still aren’t recognizing when to throw him a lob. So, I think its a stretch to assume he’ll ever dominate to the tune of 30 points against the “softer” centers. I’d settle for 20ish along with the good defense and rebounding he provided today. Also, I wish Nate hadn’t subbed for him so early in the 1st quarter when he had a pretty good rhythm going.

• There’s plenty wrong with the offense right now, but I have to assume the turnovers will correct itself to a significant degree— limiting TOs has been a Blazer strength for a couple years— I don’t see any reason why it won’t continue to be that way.

Overall, it was pretty ugly but at least it was a road win, which was very much in doubt once Aldridge went down. The Blazers were lucky Durant was so off— Webster played him well, but with KD’s length he’s going to be able to get his shot but he missed them today. So did Roy, to be fair.

Is pretty impressive.

but the execution tonight will not get it done against either ATL or SA. I think I see what Nate is trying to do with Greg (limit his minutes in the interest of the end of the season) but I really wish he’d let him keep going when he’s off to a good start. It’s also on GO to bring the intensity in his 2nd/3rd shifts like he does at the beginning of the game. All in all, the big man played well, and could have had a handful of additional points if our wing players would pull the trigger on the open pass.

Blake shot well tonight, but the defensive play from the PG position continues to be an area of concern. Tony Parker against our guys might get ugly. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – Free Bayless. Norsk said it in the Gameday thread, and I agree 100%: Russell Westbrook = Bayless with minutes. There will be growing pains, but letting this guy rot on the bench is a real waste of talent.

I’m very happy that LMA’s injury does not appear to be serious, but watching the action tonight was a reinforcement to me that LMA, not Roy or Oden, is the player this team can least afford to have injured. Travis at the 4 is entirely dependent on the matchups (tonight was okay since OKC uses the Green/Durant forward rotation heavily). Trout has been working hard on the boards this year, but 30mpg at the 4 is not a recipe for success. Juwan is a heady, veteran player, but at this stage of his career, it would be pushing it to expect more than 5-15mpg from him. Again, I still think we see a trade in season from KP to address this area, especially if LMA has to miss time for some reason.

Marty Blazer – I am so happy for this guy. I think we might see the breakout year (12 and 5, imo) that we expected before the injury last season. He’s showing that he is a solid starter in this league, he’s working hard on D, hitting from deep, and the first step is not a rumor, it’s real. With GO’s offensive game still developing and Rudy coming off a pretty taxing off-season, Martell could emerge as the consistent #3 offensive option and the player tasked with guarding the opponent’s best wing.

Thanks for the writeup Dave. Go Blazers!

“We’re the next Portland.” tonight. You only hope OKC. If your owner wants to spend $ that is.

carom

Still im convinced that miller is a better option to get the bulk of the minutes. If he and Roy can figure it out they will be fearsome on offense.

Quick

Freeman game recap

Barely …

ESPN Recap

Oden scored six of Portland’s first 10 points but wasn’t a major factor through most of the game.

is now my desktop…

My Thoughts:
Basketball is amazingly deep. And its really hard to get every thing to work perfectly. There are so many facets and aspects and possibilities. To ever win a championship, every player on our squad will have to play at an insane level. Every team in NBA history has some losses, some off nights. Our cohesiveness will get better. Lucky for us we have the talent to compensate for lack of on-court familiarity. And to quote one of my favorite Rolling Stone songs, “Time is on my side” time atleast is on the Blazers side anyways. Just one game at a time is how we will conquer!

I was glad that they clamped down on the Team Formerly Known As The Sonics, but they never should have let the pressure off to begin with. Keep the foot on the throttle and you’ll scare people!

The TFKATS is probably about 4 years away from where we are right now… They’ll need to figure out that they need to open Bennett’s wallet to get where we’re at now, and to get to where we’re going.

for his lock down defense he plays. He really fights with the players and they let him get away with it. Great win tonight, but we can play better defense.

Let’s face it, Roy is the only player among the guards and forwards who is truly good at going inside to get good shots and draw fouls. Despite his very impressive dunk tonight, Webster has some trouble to beat his man off the dribble and then holding onto the ball in traffic. It’s similar for Travis, and when he creates separation he usually rises up for his jumper and doesn’t continue to push to the rim (similar ballhandling issues). Rudy’s skills driving to the rim and drawing fouls was elite in the ACB, but in the NBA it’s just mediocre. Nic is showing some signs to become good at it especially when going baseline and after grabbing offensive rebounds (which is also a strength of Rudy, but he then usually moves the ball out again), but he is hurt now and the role of the small forward in the Blazer’s offense is limited anyway.

Miller likely is our best hope for improvement on those fronts at the moment (along with Bayless, but he won’t play much). He can post up, and he has the skills to go inside and kick out the ball to an open shooter if he can’t score himself.

Apart from that, it looks pretty bleak. This team could really need another more aggressive and dynamic wing player like Wallace, Butler, or even the fairly inefficient Gay which would do wonders to improve this, potentially even tipping the scale to make the Blazers look more on attack every night to sway the refs into calling more fouls for us. Alas, we are likely stuck with what we have and it’s unclear if one of them can develop into a player who commands more easy baskets instead of jump shots.

Headed to practice…another day to get better…blessed that I am able to play this game everyday

Looks to me like the Blazers are playing much, much better with those guys on the floor. I would give Martell much more credit for KD’s offensive struggles than Dave did. Obviously, KD missed some looks he normally would’ve knocked down, and you can’t say Martell is the sole reason why Durant shot .004% from the field or whatever. But nobody keeps Durant from getting at least a few decent looks. Martell really made him work though. Without Marty, Blazers do not come close to winning this game.

I remember seeing a picture of Rudy in street clothes this summer, and my first thought was wow, our man needs to hit the weight room and the cafeteria in a very big way. He is just too skinny to be anything more than a specialist right now. He was getting shots off the dribble against 5’11" Ty Lawson, but he’s just too flimsy to get those shots against any legit perimeter defender in the NBA, which relegates him to a spot up shooter and an occasional alley oop guy.

 I didn’t think Blake did a bad job on Westbrook at all – I thought he had one of his better defensive outings I can remember. Westbrook is uber-quick and for the most part, Steve hung with him.

While grotesque, I actually thought this game was somewhat encouraging. The Blazers got a win with Lamarcus on the bench, Roy struggling, and the whistles blowing decidedly in the wrong direction (there must have been some sort of opening week traveling quota that had to be filled in the second quarter – considering that guys regularly get three steps this season, that was amazing).

… I don’t have computer access, so I miss seeing what gets said on BE.

However I do get to watch the games. So far this season I’ve caught the Denver and the 2nd Houston game. Both losses. And while disappointing, I came away liking most of what I saw.

The loss to Denver basically came down to missed free throws. I don’t think we are going to see a lot of that over the course of the season. The Houston loss was a bit tougher to take, but we were playing them on the road after beating them 4 days earlier. The Rockets had the motivational edge.

Most of the problems I see look to come from the simple fact that the Blazers are still learning to play together. Webster and Miller are basically new guys and the starters also have to learn how to play with Greg, rather than having him come off the bench about half the time. And to all the Nate doubters – he too has to figure out not only which of his guys mesh together, but factor in nightly matchups and going with in game performance. Just because a player plays well in a certain lineup and is coming off a 25 pt – 6 reb performance doesn’t mean he’s going to do the same the next game. If he’s off to a slow start and the team is misfiring because of it, Nate then has to start improvising. And ultimately, it is up to the players to execute. The coach can send in the plays and determine the lineups, but he can’t hit shots or grab rebounds.

I didn’t get to see the OKC game. Reading Dave’s recap, it sounded pretty disappointing. Then I looked at the box score. Based on it, I don’t see what the angst is about. We just missed winning by double digits. The starters were all pretty much in double digit numbers on +/ – . The only poor showing was from the bench. I can live with our bench getting occassionally out played by the oppent bench, particularly when our starters are blowing out the opponents starters.

So far, there is only one Blazer – Andre Miller – I’ve been even slightly disappointed in, and I figure that it is far too soon to start picking his game apart. He deserves at least a quarter’s worth of the season before we should consider passing judgement.

He was clearly in the flow of the game and off to a great start and then Nate pulled him with 5:45 to go in the first?? WHY?

He had no fouls, 6 points, a block, and 4 rebounds. He could have had a great game but Nate subbed him out for no reason and then Oden looked out of sync when he came back in.

I dont get Nate’s substitution patterns at all right now.

I put this on Roy, Blake, and Miller:

They seem more like they lack better ideas after their initial screen doesn’t produce a shot, so they just give it to somebody who looks likely, saying, “Do something!” Often that person tries to create for themselves, drawing the defense, but others don’t react in time…maybe because they’re not sure yet what’s going to happen. So you end up with an awkward jumper or a guy getting double teamed, having to stop, and not being able to make an incisive pass to find the open man. Or, as in the second quarter tonight, you end up with turnovers. Basically the ball slows down to a crawl and even mediocre defenders are all over it.

When a play breaks down or is defended well, it is up to the PG or Roy (who often handles the ball) to re-set and run another play. I rarely see them calling for the re-set (especially Miller). Instead you get the wrong people trying to create for themselves which is not our strong point (except Roy). I understand you gotta do what you gotta do when the shot clock is running down but we should have some quick set plays for this very purpose. As Dave mentioned, too many time we are just running iso after the set play breaks down…

He should invite the whole team and they should do shots. The day after the next day, they’ll be a good team.

What I saw were great spurts where we looked “rusty” but seemed to know what we were doing. These plays involved players that have been out a while or just being introduced.

I saw spurts that were amazingly quick and clean. Specifically a pass by Aldridge to a cutter stands out in my mind as well as a few other moves like that from other players.

I saw spurts where everyone faltered and it felt like people didn’t know what to do to be effective.

I see a team that’s going to be very very good when it clicks.

I see players that look like they’ll fit very well once the rust is removed.

With Oden… I see a guy who’s completely unstoppable but still gangly like a teen that hasn’t finished growing into his body yet. He still reminds me of a boy out there instead of the man who declares this land his land. I actually saw a guard push him and he took two steps back. Vets will take that flop to exaggerate the foul and help pull attention to it. I mean, if the force is strong enough to move oden a few feet… it’d likely send smaller guys flying.