Feb. 4th Batum blog

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The short All-Star break is coming. I will be in Phoenix to watch the events, with Canal + [French TV station] who will follow me for the show "Intérieur Sport." The starting five chosen seems pretty logical to me. For the East, I just would have replaced Allen Iverson with Devin Harris.

Concerning Portland, we're in a good rhythm, there's a good mentality in the group. Our month of January was rather good (9 wins, 5 losses). We found ourselves 4th in the Western Conference. We're the best rebounding team. That's no small thing. It proves our seriousness and our will to reach our objectives. We proved that we can be consistent defensively and efficient on offense, with plays that we're executing better and better. We even put up 47-19 on New Orleans [talking about the comeback]! We can be dangerous. We have 35 games left, it's up to us to keep our rhythm.

For my part, I'm starting to have more offensive responsibilities. I've played several games where I took six or seven shots in twenty minutes. Against Utah, they went in and I was able to score 16 points. As there are four rookies on the team, there's always one of us who shines.

In the airplane taking us from New Orleans to Portland, we discovered that Kobe Bryant had scored 61 points. I told myself: "Ah, about time." This year, he's been a team player with the Lakers. We were expecting the scoring machine to start up again.