There isn’t much to this game, nor is there much to talk about. On the second night of a back-to-back, and for consecutive nights, the Blazers had their butts handed to them on a silver platter. The box score is a non-issue. The Jazz shot 60.6 percent and 58.3 percent from the field while the Blazers actually outscored an opponent in the paint, 36-28. Nobody is going to remember those numbers, but they will remember how they felt after the cumulative efforts of two listless games.
Since analysis is both irrelevant and unnecessary — it would just be a laundry list [...]

What’s the best recipe for a team after a humbling — some might say humiliating — home loss to a sub-.500 team? Definitely not a trip to Salt Lake City, that’s for sure. Slight history lesson here. The Blazers have dropped 14 of their last 16 games in Salt Lake City. That dates all the way back to 2001. Going back even further in the history books all the way to 1986, the Blazers have dropped 27 of their last 36 regular season visits to Salt Lake City. The land of Mormons absolutely haunts me and if you follow us [...]

“That team comes in here and jumps on us like that? No energy. I thought for most of the game there was no energy and really no excuse for no energy,” McMillan said. “I don’t know if we thought this was going to be easy or what. It just shows that if we don’t come to play, anybody can beat us.”
That quote says a lot to me and it should say a lot to you as well. Let’s get this out of the way: the Blazers deserved to lose this game. There is no other way to put it. I’m [...]

We’re a little over fifth of the way through the season, which seems like a good time to stop, smell the roses and see where the Blazers stand, statistically, around the league. We’ll do the same thing every month or so to see how things change. Most of these numbers will be coming from basketball-reference.com, teamrankings.com and other non-ESPN, non-NBA.com websites, so if you see any differences from the mainstream sites its probably due to games played or minutes played requirements. I’ve bolded anything that really sticks out, good or bad.
Date: November 26th.
Record: 12-5
Home Record: 7-2
Road Record: 5-3
Scoring:
Points Per [...]

Eventually, the kid that keeps getting beat up is going to find a way to fight back. They will find a way to get you in trouble, booby trap your locker, befriend you only to betray you by offering bad SAT advice or — were it a movie — learn Karate from a janitor.
Fortunately, the New Jersey Nets are still getting stuffed in their lockers.
There wasn’t much you could ask for going into tonight. Without a quality opponent, the Blazers weren’t going to improve in any area. They weren’t going to make a statement or even going to be noticed [...]

….do I really have to talk about the Nets?
I’m not sure what there is to be said about these Nets. I mean, New Jersey is currently at 0-14. Three games away from making all sorts of the wrong kind of history. We have officially entered this awkward ‘Lawrence Frank is about to get fired’ period that I personally am not a fan of. They have been injury plagued all year. The IZOD Center is probably the worst home-court advantage in the league. Everytime I see that goose-egg next to their record I wonder how their year would have gone had [...]

Amen.
This game covered every positive superlative in the book. It was Portland’s most impressive win of the season. It was the most fun to watch game of the year. The Blazers dominated the paint and showcased their most balanced offense of the season. Almost nothing went wrong, and the things that did were quickly erased by things that were super cool.
And that Greg Oden guy. Well, at times it looked like a high school senior playing against the freshman squad. He ticked Joakim Noah off so much that Noah full-on catapulted the ball at the basket support to earn an [...]

It’s the Bulls vs. Blazers and we’re not talking about a SEGA Genesis game. Had to do it. This is Portland’s second game of a 4-game homestand against opposition they should defeat in the Rose Garden. As Coup talked about below, this weekend was a bit of an odd one. I chalked up the loss in Golden State to another one of those weird nights at Oracle Arena. Also, 23 turnovers against a team who is just begging for an excuse to run is a recipe for disaster. And then how many more times can we pound Minnesota before we [...]

Well, where shall we start? The Blazers played five good quarters over the course of the weekend and three mediocre-to-awful quarters. They shouldn’t have lost to the Warriors, but to their credit, that loss didn’t feel like a loss to a terrible team, more like a loss to a talented team that put things together for three quarters. And the season has proved the Timberwolves to offer one heck of a pick-me-up, so the Blazers had that going for them Saturday night, which was nice.
Since by now you’ve read plenty of recaps and know what happened in these two games, [...]

Time constraints are limiting me tonight so we won’t get into any full fledged analysis. I know plenty of people will freak out about the Blazers almost blowing a 20-point lead, but it actually didn’t look as bad as it sounds. Portland strung a couple flukey, odd plays together in the fourth quarter and the bench wasn’t able to hold the lead. Yes, that leaves concerns about the bench, but none that haven’t been voiced by many, so we won’t dig into it.
I couldn’t believe, however, that Steve Blake was still in the game in those final few minutes. I’ve [...]