Archive for March, 2010

The feature story today in the NBA section at Sports Illustrated is by Frank Hughes, who delves into next season’s situation with Greg Oden’s contract extension. Hughes apparently caught up with Kevin Pritchard at Madison Square Garden, so there are quotes you probably won’t get anywhere else, though most of it you’ve heard or read before. There’s also your typical national usage of the Sam Bowie crutch, but that’s expected. Otherwise, it’s a very fair piece and worth a read. “Not that you want to have anybody suffer any knee injury,” Pritchard said Monday while attending the Big East tournament [...]

How fitting. Two days after blowing a double-digit lead to the Sacramento Kings, the Blazers come back from a double-digit deficit to beat the Golden St. Warriors in Oakland for the first time since the Lord of the Rings movies were still in theaters. Sounds like a perfect time for a companion piece to the breakdown of the near-collapse against the Kings. We’ll be picking things up in the fourth quarter, but know that until that quarter was well underway, the Blazers had been thoroughly outplayed by the smallball Warriors, again. LaMarcus Aldridge was again confused with what to do [...]

I will use any excuse to use that video clip on this blog. Tonight, Portland returns to the road facing off against the Golden State Warriors. This is the beginning of a quick back-to-back trip in California, concluding tomorrow in Sacramento. Tonight marks the Blazers, 4th appearance in a Thursday night TNT game, their first on the road. They have gone 2-1 on the season. Random stat right? Well I was trying to distract myself from the fact that the Blazers have indeed lost 9 straight in the Oracle Arena. That dates back all the way to 2004. I was [...]

We’re going to do things a little differently tonight. Since the Blazers won a relatively simplistic game — neither team could defend the paint all that well — in which they followed a familiar pattern in failing to hold a double-digit lead in the fourth, we’re going to delve into how that happened rather than go further into the broader happenings of a contest that played out rather predictably (relatively speaking). After all, we keep telling you that this Portland roster survives on it’s offense and merely gets by with its defense, so why don’t we show you for once. [...]

Over at ESPN, J.A. Adande did a little write up about the Blazers. It’s clearly intended for a national audience, and thus mostly just a rehash of information you probably already know, but the quotes are solid. It’s not really a column, either, since there isn’t a ton of opinion from Adande, but I always say these things are worth a read because of how ESPN can shape the public’s perception of team’s they aren’t as familiar with. Howard, the oldest man on a team stocked with eight players 25 or under, has taken on the advice-dispensing role as well. [...]

The Sacramento Kings are in town to face the Blazers in what will be only Portland’s second home game in the last two weeks. An even nuttier stat: the Blazers only have 8 home games left. As a team trying to make a push towards the playoffs, home games against sub .500 teams in the month of March are a good thing. I will try my best not to nail the ‘you don’t lose to these teams’ point in your head too much even though it is the truth. You can’t deny that this is a big opportunity for Portland [...]

From the Blazers: Joel Przybilla underwent successful surgery tonight to repair a re-ruptured right patella tendon. No timetable has been set for his return. At least we can say everyone has been having successful surgeries this season. Here’s to Joel and his family pulling through this.

As expected, no? Really, the biggest break the Blazers got was catching the Nuggets without their best defender in Kenyon Martin. Without him, the thinking could have been that LaMarcus Aldridge could have a huge night in the post and the Blazers could put enough shooting around that performance to steal a win. It was a thin glimmer of hope in a game that Portland didn’t really need, but it was something. That hope wound up being akin to throwing down your budget of gambling money on 23 red at the roulette wheel, losing all of it, and saying, “Well, [...]

From Casey Holdahl of Blazers.com: Trail Blazers center Joel Przybilla will undergo surgery on his right patella tendon in the next few days. Przybilla re-ruptured his right patella tendon Saturday morning after slipping in the shower at his home in Milwaukee, Wis. Joel initially had surgery on December 24. His status for the offseason and training camp was already in question. Casey’s report says there is no timetable for return, but you have to wonder whether he’ll be ready for the start of the 2010 season now. Best wishes to Joel and his family. UPDATE: Here’s Jason Quick with more [...]

This is going to come off as the ultimate form of nitpicking. If I didn’t think it was so strange — and I’ve gone over it many times in my head — I wouldn’t even bother posting on it. But he we are, trying to make sense of something as trivial and meaningless as piecing together the big twist in Saw IX. Jared Wade, of the always excellent Hardwood Paroxysm, was at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference yesterday and wrote a good summation of the conversation about how teams use statistics. On the panel, among others, were Mark Cuban [...]