Thoughts on Houston & OKC Games

Our team played with NO fire in the first half at Houston. Sometimes in the first half it seemed that the Blazers literally were playing with 4 players. We were molasses and they were ms.butterworths today. LMA was not LMA. Camby was not Camby. Felton put in a Felton-like in his performance today. Matthews had an ok game on the offensive side but on D he got torched by Courtney Lee multiple times. GW was good, but he also got TORCHED by Budinger tonight. Crash and Batum both got schooled by the Zona sharpshooter. Batum had an ok game by my standards. His stats weren’t great but when he comes in the game you can just instantly see our defense improve. Besides not closing fast enough on Budinger, Batum played pretty good defensively. So our team defense? Calling our team defense, ahem, excuse me, WHERE THE &#@$ WAS OUR TEAM D TONIGHT??? Like, im talking about our help D. It seemed non-existent until a familiar storyline decides to pop up again, you know, the one where the Blazers wait until they closely resemble slugs, get blown out, and then decide to try and make the valiant comeback only to…..fall short. Yo, Jamal!!! Even though you got 21, Jamal, I am calling you out for your bad help and team defense in the first half. Again, I must first say that I hate Nate’s defensive switching schemes that create all sorts of mismatches for our defense to cope with. In that 2nd quarter there were probably 4 straight possessions of a Houston guard probing a mismatch against one of our bigs after the switch and Jamal never made an effort to head back to the guy heading to the basket. Jamal was talked to at halftime by Nate and in the 2nd half he was a different player on the defensive end and even got a nice blocked shot as a reward. I really hope these players/Nate really really start to get angry about these performances and fix these throwaway games we are starting to see on a regular basis. OKC GAME First off, I have to say that I INTENSELY hate you Scott Foster. Not only did he make the egregious horrible puke-in-your-mouth GOALTENDING call with 6 seconds left in a game and even after the game he would not acknowledge his error. Shucks if I ever am reincarnated as an NBA referee I know I would be bending over backwards apologizing for missing that call. At the bare minimum you should acknowledge that you are wrong when you are wrong. I know officiating professional sports, especially basketball, is a very challenging job but I really feel that NBA refs have it way to easy. The NBA has not made them accountable (excluding Donaghy) for missing calls or making mistakes. They hardly EVER get fired. Why does the NBA have the same refs that have been around for 10, 15, 20 years? Seeing Dick Bavetta huffing and puffing up the court a few years ago and Joe Crawford’s ancient decaying mass making that horrible call in the PHX serious. Hey NBA if your listening, a few thoughts. Keep tally of the most horrendous calls. If there are glaring descrepencies in the amount of errors per person then you figure out who is making the bad calls and not necessarily fire him but keep a little closer tab to him. OR if there is ref who consistently calls a way larger # of fouls in the 4th quarter that would be another very useful statistic to keep ahold of and measure. Accountability, accountability, and more accountability. HEY TRAILBLAZERS, THIS IS A PROFESSIONAL SPORT. BE PROFESSIONALS AND COME READY TO PLAY.