This is my percentage breakdown on who are at fault: 30% for Nate, 50% on Crawford, 15% on Felton, and maybe 5% on Aldridge. Crawford gets most of the blame because he had the ball in his hands most of the time and chose to take it on his own instead of setting up Aldridge or others. Felton gets some because he chose a bad, bad, time to try to shoot himself out of a slump. AND, as a PG he should have looked for LaMarcus first. McMillan is the coach, and it’s his grand scheme so there’s some accountability there. And lastly, and it’s minor, but perhaps could turn into a huge one, Aldridge should probably lay it into the guards to make better decisions.

Nearly every possession down the stretch, Dirk touched the ball at least once. Exactly the opposite for LMA. The Blazers seem to forget about him at the end of the game.

I could understand if they were riding someone’s hot hand, but LMA scored 15 in the 4th quarter, for heaven’s sake.

As for who is to blame, how about all of the above? Nate and LMA need to insist that LMA get the ball, and LMA needs to take his teammates to task for not feeding him. He needs a little selfishness. Crawford, Felton, and others need to remember that LMA is the all-star, not them.

So the idea was either to free up the point guard or get open for a really long J. What was needed was to get Aldridge the ball as close to the basket as possible.

When the Blazers did get the ball to LMA in the post – his one option was to shoot the turnaround J.

Not very satisfactory.

IMO its not about who shoots as long as its a good shot and we had some good shots that just didnt fall

Crawford is what he is: a streak shooter. His inconsistency can be tolerated because he’s the kind of player that makes up for off nights with on nights, or hits a big shot in crunch time.

Felton, on the other hand, has GOT TO be more consistent as the team’s PG. He simply isn’t working out. The season’s half over, what more is there to see? The real responsibility/blame from this point on falls on the management. Its time to make a move. They won’t get jack for Felton alone obviously. I think they’d have to package him with either Wes or GW and go after someone like Nash. Parting with GW now seems like the most practical move. That, or convince Nic he can play the 2 and then cut ties with Wes. Imagine if you will a starting five of Nash, Batum, Wallace, Aldridge and Camby. Lights out with Jamal off the bench.

but I will say the current free agent veterans we picked up in last two seasons are not as coachable as the Brandon Roy teams that were among the youngest, least experienced in the league. I am in favor of a rebuild starting with any trade deadline deals that can bring in unrestricted, top 10 picks. Every player including LaMarcus should be available (though I might keep Batum and E. Williams). An up and coming young team is easier to root for than a dead-end veteran team.

Was Nate’s decision to run Felton/Crawford/Mathews to start the second OT – with Mathews completely unable to handle Delonte West one on one.

Besides the inability to for the guards to hit a jumper in OT – that was the single biggest factor contributing to the loss.