Blazers 95, Clippers 105 Re-Thoughts
By SJ
January 4th 2010, aka the night Juwan Howard partied like it was 1996. Seriously, did he think he was Dwight Howard or something? Where the bleep did that come from?? Has Juwan Howard had a SportsCenter highlight like that in the past couple decades??? How hyped were you when that dunk happened? There is a reason Twitter nearly exploded, I mean good gosh. I jumped off the couch so fast I thought I might have pulled something. All the corny jokes aside, this game has to be remembered for the night Juwan Howard Lexington Steele’d all over Chris Kaman. It has to. There is no way any human being watching that could have just sat there like nothing happened. I have to give Juwan Howard his due…I mean I thought the man had less bounce than Candace Parker’s baby. He sure has proven me wrong, I was for sure that he had settled into ‘grizzled veteran looking to steal money as long as someone will let me’ mode. Boy was I wrong, he’s found the fountain of something. The beauty of 2010 Juwan Howard is that the smallest things impress us so much more. He’s like that cute girl at the bar who stays cute until your friend tells you she’s 39 and/or has 3-5 kids. Then she becomes hot. That’s 2010 Juwan Howard in a nutshell.
(Seriously, I can’t believe its 2010 and I just wrote a paragraph fawning over Juwan Howard. What is the world coming too? I feel like if I were to watch Paranormal Activity tonight I would absolutely sink to the depths of hell never to return. I mean if you had told me before the season that in 2010 I’d open a Re-Thoughts with Juwan Howard love I would have asked ‘How many shots of Everclear did I have?’, snarkily laughed in your face and quietly judged you. Let’s just hope LL Cool J didn’t see this. He might try and rap again.)
Yes, there was more than Juwan Howard’s dunk tonight. The Blazers dropped a game to the Clippers. I don’t know about you, but I’m not having too rough of a time swallowing this one. Maybe I’m still euphoric from Juwan’s dunk, but with the state of the team right now it feels like there are going to be nights where the ball bounces our way and nights where it doesn’t. A couple nights ago. It did. Tonight, it didn’t. I mean on the 30th against this same very team you could argue we maybe should have lost. The other reason why I’m not taking this one too hard: Brandon Roy scored 6 points. As depleted as we are, if Brandon Roy scores 6 points we are in some deep, quicksand-like doo doo. Even at full strength, its going to be tough to win with Roy only dropping 6. No need for over analysis, Roy struggling like he did was a major reason for the loss. This isn’t a criticism, just a fact. He’s been phenomenal as of late, tonight he just looked a bit sluggish. Credit the Clips for making him the focus of their defensive gameplan. But a struggling/tired Roy is no bueno for this squad. And thus the Blazers walk out of the Staples Center with an L. Did Kaman/Camby beast us a little? Yeah…but not anymore than they did the other night. The Clips hit us inside and when we tried to take that away they made shots (Eric Gordon…damn) and we didn’t have enough to answer back. Case closed.
(Long story short….it is really tough to win anywhere (especially on the road) when you’re depleted, your star scores 6 points, your opponent shoots 58 percent from the field/61 percent from three and outrebounds you 38-29. That’s just tough.)
Another excellent performance by Martell Webster who seems to have pulled a Stella and got his groove back (hey if Juwan can go off I can use that dated reference). Credit to @AGDuck and @blazersblog for bringing this to my attention on Twitter, but apparently scoring wise he’s putting up some of his best numbers in consecutive games of his career. Pretty neat stat to see from someone whom you’ve worried about seeing consistency from. I’m surprised Coup has not drowned the RCP offices with Martell Webster love.
Andre Miller’s 22 points and 16 assists made me cheese. He is clearly beneficiary numero uno from this whole depleted roster thing. Dre is just going out there and playing. You can just taste the aggression through the TV screen. Its fun to just watch him play his game and not over think or get tight or get caught up in all the madness. The reason why I’m not completely fawning over it is because in the back of my head I don’t know if he’s turning a corner or just playing well because he knows he’s going to play a ton of minutes. I really wish he would just kind of stop giving interviews, because the more he does the more it seems like he’s just kind of saying/doing the right things and might be thinking otherwise.
(And yes, fawning is the word du jour it won me a Scrabble game so I spread it to you all.)
The rest of the squad? I don’t have many words. Jeff Pendergraph hustled and is continuing to encourage the Blazer faithful (8 and 7), Dante Cunningham was solid and there is nothing wrong with that. Jerryd Bayless seemed somewhere else and Patty Mills is fast. Oh yeah…Shavlik Randolph scored. To the people’s thoughts:
Twitter Thoughts
@pdXXXchange Juwan Howard went 88mph when he dunked over Kaman.
@DJBReady Lack of Frontcourt Depth, Length, etc. really starting to take affect on the team. Got dominated inside tonight
@GoDucks32 Miller was outstanding, but w ejust need more players. They cant keep the pace up…can they?
@shai6sense When the heart is not working the body can’t win on his own. B-Roy with a bad game = Portland lose 🙁
@thelance Blazers just seemed gassed at the end of the 3rd quarter. It caught up with them and the game got out of hand fast.
@travismargoni In theory I could excuse this one. But having watched all those Clippers’ turnovers, and Roy taken out by THAT Defense: ouch
@AngieLovesPDX After the first quarter or so we had no defense. And half way through the 4th it looked like we had just given up.
@alexjsteele Roy had 6 points…Duh we lose with our current squad. No other analysis necessary.
Well….enough said. I’m interested to see how our undersized front-line handles Zach Randolph playing like an All-Star and Marc Gasol tomorrow night.