Game 81 Recap: Blazers 113, Thunder 83

Boxscore

Folks, the rules of politeness pretty much demand that I not recap this game fully.  You can check out WelcometoLoudCity to see if they do any better.  I doubt it, as it's pretty hard to type when you're smashing the keyboard with both fists.

Long story short, there was a battle of the superheroes tonight pitting Superman against the Wonder Twins' monkey.  I'll let you guess which was which.  Either way, a blow-by-blow probably isn't necessary.  Let's just say the Man of Steel has a new necklace and the purple primate ain't too happy about it.

As far as general observations, the Blazers defended, snagged the ball, and then ran all night.  It'd take me six pages just to go through the highlights.  The best way to say it was that there wasn't a single possession--not even one--where you felt the Blazers were in any way out of control of the action or the game.  All of the Thunder buckets fell under the general category of "crap happens".  Meanwhile the Blazers alley-ooped, dunked, bombed, sliced, diced, squished, smooshed, passed, smashed, and generally bullied their way into every kind of basket imaginable.  Portland's rebounding was unassailable.  The defense was crisp and active.  Their big three combined for 31 points total, Durant scoring only 10 of those.  It was just an, "Excuse me, your jackrabbit appears to be lodged under my bulldozer" kind of night.

If you want individual observations, you can almost write your own.  If you're a fan of anyone besides Nic Batum (who went home before the game with strep throat) or Shavlik Randolph (who wasn't activated) or LaMarcus Aldridge (who played hard on defense and rebounded but didn't compile big stats) you can just say, "My guy had one of his best nights of the season!  I knew he had it in him!!!"  Case closed.  You like your Michael Ruffins, your Travises and Rudys, your Sergios and Jerryds?  This night was for you.  Everybody did something great, even the guys who struggled a little.

There's nothing to critique here, which makes for a pretty poor recap.  So this is the night just to celebrate.  Name your favorite play from the game, talk about the atmosphere, light up the switchboard with your "WOOOOOOOT!"ing.  Tonight is your night.

The seeding report for the night comes next.  That's going to take more time, so I'm cheating off of this a little to do that. 

Scoring was tight in the Jersey Contest playoffs.  You can check out the scores and the final eight participants can enter the last regular season game of the year here.

You can read the Gameday Threads here if you wish.

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)