Before I get all rhapsodical over everything, let's make sure the facts don't get short shrift: The Portland Trail Blazers completed their best regular season since 1999-00, and made the playoffs for the first time in six years with the crucial (homecourt) fourth seed. They finished by beating the Denver Nuggets 104-76, in a game where the Nuggets appeared to learn midway of the game's seeding meaninglessness to Denver, who was locked in as #2 by virtue of Houston's loss and San Antonio's OT win (damn that James Posey!)
The Blazers will open this Saturday eveneing against Houston, the fifth seed, in Portland at the Garden. Tuesday night will also be there, and then two games will go down in Houston before (presumably) they'll come back here for Game 5 and alternate as necessary for the next two.
You up to speed now? Fully briefed? OK.
There's a deeper reason I've been covering the Blazers this year, although not a hidden one; I've said before that I sensed this season was building to something special. I got excited during the 13-game run last year, and I did the first Blazer coverage at Loaded Orygun during that time. Enjoy it or wish there were more politics, there's no way to deny the Blazers as a notable Oregon story, not just by virtue of their being the only game in town.
I expected a great story--the rebuilding of a team that had lost its way and in the process its community and fanbase, but admitted its faults and started fresh, from players to coaches to management. And how about that, this scrappy young team managed to sneak into the playoffs to get waxed by the Lakers in 5! That's awesome, I thought. Good story, worth following.
If someone you know is saying they predicted home court in Round 1 back in November, slap them for lyin'. I called 50+ wins a solid likelihood on December 4th, and a month later pegged it at 51. But friends would have slapped me stupid (not a long journey, I know) if I'd gone on about the Blazers getting one of the top four seeds. Utah? NO? Dallas? Houston? Portland's gonna finish ahead of them?
And what about the division? I don't know if people have fully grasped this, but the Blazers are 100% within their rights--and will have a banner--to declare their Northwest Division (co) Championship. The seeding only happens for the playoffs; for purposes of winning the division it's a tie. Heck, if the NBA wised up and used something like point differential, the Blazers would be the #2 seed instead.
So I had a hunch, and hoped that something really good was happening, something that would not only recapture the town's heart no matter the result, but which might even stretch beyond the Rose City and generate discussion across the country.
The appeal of the story has exceeded any fan's wildest dreams. There are perhaps greater achievements yet to come for this franchise and this core group of guys, but this year is like seeing the Beatles in Hamburg, or knowingly scoring tickets to THAT week of Ed Sullivan. You can say you saw them when, you saw what they might do, before they did it.
And now it's penetrated: the rest of the league is talking about "nobody wants to face Portland," and their potential to be a serious sleeper in the West in trying to get past the Rockets and then the Lakers. Brandon Roy was Player of the Week, and Oden is being recognized at least for being a solid post defender, having graduated from being a total bust to simply not being Patrick Ewing or Bill Russell.
The cute little team that could, in short, did. Their story is going bigtime, and I wanted to be there to cover it as it broke. That's worked out pretty well, eh?
I have to say up front that I missed half this game. I watched the first half in lovely TNT HD (although the announcers were excreable), and set the DVR to record the 2nd while I watched Idol and Survivor...please, no giggling. Watching the Blazers beat the Pacers the night before in this way worked out pretty well, Lil' Joe keeping the result he watched live a secret...kind of; he said it would be "amazing."
Except, as you can guess, when I returned a couple hours later to see how Portland had fared, whether they had regrouped in the 2nd half as usual and captured a big road win...pffffft. Nada. Emptiness. Sadness. Grief, and whatever the other six stages are.
Turns out, as you probably well know and even saw yourself, they didn't. The third quarter actually got close about halfway through, building off a second stanza that went a long way to repair the damage of the first, when the Nuggets outscored them 32-18. But just as a hot start collapsed in the first, the surge to parity in the third was undercut by another disappearing act, and the rest of the game from there was mostly treading water.
I can tell you that the first half was simply a repeat of the two games last week in Texas, except that for about 5 minutes or so it looked like it would be totally different. LaMarcus Aldridge had four baskets on the Blazers first five shots, and had 10 points by the 7:45 mark of the first, Portland holding onto a 12-11 lead.
That was the high water mark of the game. For the rest of the quarter, Joel and Roy hit a foul shot, and Brandon made two other buckets. They missed 11 other shots, and turned it over three additional times. LaMarcus especially went as cold as he was hot. Carmelo Anthony took over, the extraordinarily hideous Chris Anderson chipped in, and JR Smith added a few daggers of his own.
Roy and Aldridge finished with their usual 20-odd points, and Rudy and Blake hit their couple of threes. Outlaw actually had a strong game, going 7-10 and hitting in the 2nd when no one else was, to bring the Blazers back into it. He also had six rebounds, which is a solid total for him (and totally outshines LMA, who played 13 more minutes and had just 4).
Statistically the game wasn't that disparate, although the Nuggets had significantly more assists and a whopping 9 blocks. In fact, not having seen four of them, I'd still be willing to say the job that Nene and Anthony did in the paint effectively sealed off the chances of a Portland win. Long streaks of inefficiency from outside are something the Blazers understand well, and often they are able to shake themselves from torpor and do something to adjust.
Usually, smartly, that adjustment is to try driving for the hole and banging inside. Typically with Joel and LMA and Batum and Outlaw, they can win those matchups if only they assert themselves and have confidence. Against the Nuggets, those attempts were violently opposed. When the jump shots aren't falling, and your pass to the lane has been revoked, what else can you do?
So I'd put this a little bit on the offense/Denver defense, which did a sold job of putting Portland out of its rhythm. But I'd be remiss in not mentioning that the Blazer defense was once again not what it needed to be, and once agin it was a matter of hustle, help and harrassment. They didn't go for the balls quickly enough, they were virtual sieves on moves to the bucket, and they didn't get out on the shooters. The successful fighting of screens that I saw so often against the Spurs and in fact the Pacers, was gone in the first half last night.
I'll end it here. It was a game the Blazers would have really, really, REALLY liked to have had. But frankly, they didn't need it. The division crown is not decided today, there's another Denver game left at the Garden, the Nuggets have to go do THEIR back end of the back to back in Utah, who are just about the hottest team in the Association right now...and truthfully, these are games Portland can lose and still prosper.
What? Now that they're 1-12 against West contenders on the road (and the one was the CP3 injury game), isn't that a fatal flaw? Well, yes and no. Obviously if they're slotted 5-8 in the playoffs, that's a big problem. But as far as just getting there, the pattern the Blazers have developed can actually give them a 3 or 4 slot: beat the Eastern Conference wherever you play them, beat the West at home, beat the bad West teams at their place. If they do that, and they have so far, they'll be fine. That means sweeping Minnesota, Dallas and the Lakers coming up, but they're all winnable.
The other part of that is that most of the tough road games are over. There are a couple left--Houston, Cleveland, San Antonio--but that's it. They certainly don't need to go 18-3 (and they won't), but it puts a whole new perspective to think of just three more games the entire rest of the season that you circle on the calendar and think, "Man, probably can't win that one." Some of the roadies will still be tough--Atlanta, OKC, Indiana, even one of the Memphis games perhaps--but they're not games the Blazers can write off for now. Last night's? Put it behind ya, there are more good ones coming right up...
As hoped (by me at least), I was able to watch virtually all of the home end of the Blazers' back to back, home and away double dip against Denver last night. As I understand it, last night's game looked similar to Monday's tussle in Colorado, with the notable exceptions ultimately being a supportive crowd and a win. Brandon Roy was not held under double digits as he was Monday, but in neither game did he control the action on the floor as usual. Overall, I think the Blazers have to be pretty pleased with themselves to earn the split against the team they are most closely battling right now for the division lead.
From ESPN's recap (whose highlight reel took all of five seconds to 1) call Batum "Bait-em" and 2) get the score wrong), quotes by Joel Pryzbilla and Chauncey Billups that amply explain the feel of Game 2:
"After last night, where they kind of took it to us and beat us up, this is a really big win for us," said Joel Przybilla, who had 19 rebounds and 10 points. "We're going to be battling with this team all season for the division."(snip)
"We knew these two games would be playoff-type games," said Nuggets guard Chauncey Billups, who added 17 points on 4-of-12 shooting. "They cracked up to be just that."
No doubt fellas, no doubt. I bring up Joel's comments for a couple of reasons: first, because without a doubt the Beige Primate earned the star of the game, picking up a double double that featured 19 tasty rebounds. He also faced two must-make situations at the foul line, one with the Blazers up by 3 and 2:40 to go, and even more crucially with just a minute left and a 5-point Portland edge. The 53% career foul shooter (though he's much better this year) calmly drained all four easies, and didn't even make it look hard.
Secondly, as the primary big man on the team still, Pryz knows when an opponent is trying to out-physical the Blazers off the court. It's been a noticeable problem since Boston, but until Oden comes into his own I think everyone knew that toughness and physicality would be one of the issues the Blazers would need to confront if they were to step up and become a playoff team.
Well, here I am in Northern Virginia, finally. I was supposed to arrive Sunday evening, but you know the story with the weather and the various strandings around the region. We had to drive to Seattle to get out!
While I was on the plane to Long Beach, I was able to capture updates on last night's Blazer loss to the Nuggets in Denver, then read through the recap at Blazer's Edge and tried to catch any relevant clips. (It sure would be nice if the NBA could put together chronological 5-min videos like the NFL does on Comcast).
I don't feel too capable, therefore, in presenting a recap based on my thoughts about the game--given that I didn't see any of it live. (And a good thing, too--apparently Rebecca Harlow was to blame!) To get a solid review, as usual check out the boys at Blazer's Edge.
Tonight since I've got access to broadband, I'm watching a pirate feed of the game at the Rose Garden (snowdrifts in the B-roll footage!), so I'll hope to find some time to get up a look at the pair of games in context on Christmas Eve. In any case, it being the holidays and all, hopefully you've got somewhere else to be, virtually speaking--because it will be otherwise a little light on content this week.
So happy holidays, go Blazers, and check back for a look at the Denver games. Right now Portland is up 5 at the half, but have looked mostly terrible doing so and were up 12 shortly beforehand. (We'll call that "bonus coverage.")
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