Nov 30, 2012; Boston, MA, USA; Boston Celtics power forward Kevin Garnett (5) dribbles the ball against Portland Trail Blazers shooting guard Wesley Matthews (2) and center J.J. Hickson (right) during the first half at TD Garden. Mandatory Credit: Mark L. Baer-USA TODAY Sports

I was asked recently to contribute my thoughts on what Blazer fans have to look forward to in what remains of the 2012-13 season. It’s a tough question, what is their left to look forward to, considering that Portland is very very likely out of the Playoff race, hasn’t won a game in their last seven tries, and still have the Knicks, the Nets, the Lakers, the Thunder, and the Warriors to play at home, a four-game swing against four Eastern Conference playoff teams, and road dates with Oklahoma City, Golden State, and the Los Angeles Clippers left on their schedule.

Things could very easily go from bad to worse for the Blazers. It’s hard to convince the fan base that they have anything at all to look forward to.

But the truth is, there are at least a few things we should all try to feel positive about. Two of them are going to be on display when Portland takes on the Boston Celtics on Sunday in the Rose Garden. First among those two is that the Blazers tend to play their best basketball at home against the best teams in the league. Second: Eric Maynor.

When 2012-13 is laid to rest in the middle of April, we’ll all look back at what went down this season and remember that the Blazers beat both the San Antonio Spurs and the Miami Heat at the Rose Garden in two of the best games of the season. As of this writing, the Spurs’ 44-13 record makes them the best team in the NBA. Incidentally, the Heat, with a record of 39-14 are the second best team in the NBA. Portland has proven that they can play with and beat the best two teams in the league.

Sunday, with the Boston Celtics in town, the Blazers will have another chance to best one of the better teams in the NBA. Boston is no longer one of the elite Eastern Conference teams, but they are still a damn sight better than Portland (at least record-wise) and in a lot of ways are the LA Lakers of the East (for this season and many others). Right now the Celtics are a heroic team, playing through injury, fighting for seeding at the bottom of the Eastern Conference Playoff picture. They’re also going to be the team coming out of the East that will be given the ever popular, SportsCenter headline favorite, “team nobody wants to face in the first round,” especially if Boston hits that magic number and ends up opposite the New York Knicks to kick off the Playoffs. Sunday should be a fun game. Blazer fans have that to look forward to.

Rebuilding is a long process with many ins and outs. General Managers have to balance what they have with what they can give with what they want to have. It’s a delicate act that go wrong in so many ways so quickly that some teams would rather be losers forever than risk leveraging the present in sake of the future. Neil Olshey came to Portland with the mandate to make this team better, to get this team back into the Playoffs on a regular basis, and to get this team COMPETING once they get to the Playoffs.

Olshey also has to do all that without jeopardizing what was developed before he showed up, and he also has to make everything work without the Blazers going over the salary cap. Portland is a small market team and its big market owner isn’t going to ignore that fact any longer.

Enter Eric Maynor. By trading basically nothing, and cutting a player making basically nothing who was doing basically nothing, for a guy who not even that long ago was considered the best back-up point guard in the NBA is a move that makes the team better (probably in the long-term, since I imagine Olshey and the brass look at a 25 year-old as not being just a rental player) without costing then anything. It’s the kind of move that Neil Olshey was hired to make. Blazer fans have the play of Eric Maynor (now and in the future) to look forward to starting Sunday.

Blazers Starting 5: PG Damian Lillard, SG Wesley Matthews, SF Nicolas Batum, PF LaMarcus Aldridge, C J.J. Hickson

Celtics Starting 5: PG Avery Bradley, SG Courtney Lee, SF Paul Pierce, PF Jeff Green, C Brandon Bass

Portland has two tasks on Sunday. First, they need to stop Paul Pierce, and second, they need to figure out a way to score.

Paul Pierce is getting up there in years, but he is still one of the best and most dynamic scorers in the NBA. He is also the heart and soul of this Celtics squad. As he goes, so goes his team. Figuring out a way to keep Pierce from having a huge night will be the Blazers’ most important job. That means a couple of things. First, Wesley Matthews and Nicolas Batum will have to play strong perimeter defense. Second, everybody else will have to work to keep Pierce off the line. And third, the entire Portland roster will have to crash the defensive glass. Letting Paul Pierce get more than one look at the rim on any given offensive possession is a recipe for disaster.

After stopping Pierce, the Blazers’ second-most important task will be figuring out how to score. The Celtics have been and will always be a defensive minded team. They’re going to try to out muscle Portland, they’re going to try to bully Portland, and they are going to make scoring almost impossible. To counter that, the Blazers need to focus on getting good shots (that means smart ball movement), they’re going to have to try hard to get to the line, and they need to crash the offensive glass. Second chance points could be a determining factor Sunday night. The team with the most second effort scores very well could win this game.

What to Watch For

• Who plays, for how long, and how well. Kevin Garnett sat out Boston’s win in Phoenix. I’m not listed KG among the starters for that reason, but there’s no reason to think he won’t be in action against the Blazers. Whether or not Garnett plays is important, how well he plays is just as important. LaMarcus Aldridge and KG have a history. The winner of that match-up is going to be important. Also how much and how well Eric Maynor plays is going to be important. I think Maynor will finish his 27 games with Portland averaging in the neighborhood of 25 minutes a night. Nolan Smith averages 8.3 minutes per game in the 31 games he’s played in; Ronnie Price averaged 13.1 minutes in his 39 appearances as a Blazer. If Maynor hits 25 minutes per, that will be about twice what Price played and just below three times what Smith has played. Many many things can be done with those minutes. Sunday could go a long way to showing how getting significant minutes from a back-up point guard affects the play of the Blazers. Another guy to watch RE: how much and how well they play is Meyers Leonard. Meyers will benefit the most fro the added minutes that come with meaningless late season games. He played well against the Lakers. Boston also doesn’t really have a center. Leonard still hasn’t had a break out game yet. He doesn’t have that many chances left.
• Will the Blazers realize how important winning this game is. The Playoffs are probably out of the picture, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t something left to play for. Pride is one thing. Also, keeping fans in the seats. Sunday there is going to be a lot of Celtics’ green in the Rose Garden. It happens when popular East Coast teams come to Portland. If the Blazers want their remaining home games against the Knicks, the Nets, the Lakers, and the Thunder to feel like home games, they have to win.
• Eric Maynor. I’ve already mentioned him a couple of times, but pay close attention to the reaction he gets when checking into Sunday’s game for the first time. I expect a standing ovation.

@mikeacker | @ripcityproject | mike.acker1@gmail.com

Nicolas Batum provided one of the few highlights Thursday night against the Celtics before exiting early with an injury, wait for it, to his knee. Photo courtesy of the Oregonian.

In fairness to the Blazers, it seems that Portland can really only play Boston tight once a season. In 2008-09, Portland was blown out in Boston 93-78, only to turn around 11 games later and beat the Celtics at the Rose Garden 91-86. One of the most exciting games in recent memory, that 2008 home version of Blazers vs Celtics featured a team without Brandon Roy, due to injury, and included an infamous back-of-the-head slap from LaMarcus Aldridge to Kevin Garnett. It was also the last time Portland beat the Boston Celtics.

The trend continued the following season; Portland lost in Boston again in an overtime thriller 98-95, I’m sure everybody remembers the big time three from Ray Allen in that game, then were run out of their own gym later in the same month 96-76. What’s the point of that brief trip down memory lane? To say this, the good news is that Portland got to play well against Boston once in 2010-11. The bad news, that game wasn’t on Thursday night.

Thursday was not Portland’s evening. Although it was never a blow out, it also was never that close. For what it’s worth, Boston is one of the best teams in the league. They are built around veteran players, they get up for games every night, and the execute their game plan. They rushed Portland on offense, made the Blazers work for every thing, and were able to basically get whatever they wanted on offense. Boston also has something Portland does not. Depth. Thursday, if one set wasn’t working, or one guy was not getting it done, the C’s could go to their bench. When Portland’s offense went to sleep, there was nothing to do but wait for it to come back on line. In clicked in with under two minutes to go, but at that point it was a case of too little, too late.

LaMarcus Aldridge didn’t struggle in quite the same way he did in the Blazers’ last outing, but nothing was easy for him Thursday. Using KG, Glen Davis, and Kendrick Perkins, the Celtics made LaMarcus work. He was up to the task a few times, but getting banged down low every single possession can wear on a guy after a while. LA’s handles were sloppy, and when trying to force the issue, he ended up turning the ball over. LaMarcus finished with 17 points, and added an impressive 16 rebounds, but it took him 20 shot attempts to get there. Also LA shot only two free throws, meaning that for as well as Boston was doing at taking away his inside game, they did it all without fouling. LaMarcus could have helped himself out by trying to initiate contact, but a few body blows from Perkins or Garnett, and it could have been an even longer night for the Blazers.

The big question over the last few months has been, who is going to be the Blazers’ second consistent scorer. It has rotated most nights, but one thing has been pretty clear. When the shooters don’t show up the Blazers don’t win. Not including LaMarcus, four guys took 10 or more shots Thursday night. Of those four, Andre Miller made the most shots, going 6-of-15 for 14 points, and Patty Mills made the least, 3-of-10 for seven points. The poorest shooting night came from Wesley Matthews, 4-of-15 for 12 points, and it would have been a lot worse had Wesley not buried two threes late in the fourth quarter. As a team, the Blazers shot 37%. Even with almost 30 more shot attempts than the Celtics, those kind of shooting numbers don’t usually lead to a win.

If there is a positive that can be taken away from Thursday, and I feel like there is, it was that Portland showed heart, and never really gave up. The Celtics are a tough team, one of the best in the league, and they got there by playing tough defense, being mean, and playing smart, efficient, and effective basketball. Portland has been ravaged by injuries, I’ll get to the most recent injury momentarily, and is still trying to figure out what kind of team it really wants to be. The Blazers came into Thursday’s match-up serious underdogs, even on their home floor, but they never rolled over. Portland was down by as many as 15 points late in the fourth quarter, with guys like Von Wafer and Semih Erden on the floor for the C’s. The Blazers kept fighting, managing to cut the lead to five with under a minute to play before the game was basically sealed by a Kevin Garnett offensive rebound. One reason Portland stuck around Thursday was obviously because emptying the bench isn’t an option when you have no bench, but that shouldn’t take away from the overall effort that the Blazers showed in the final seconds Thursday night.

Portland has the unenviable task of moving from hosting the second best team in the league to hosting the best team in the league on consecutive nights. When asked post game about preparing for the San Antonio Spurs, both Coach Nate McMillan and LaMarcus Aldridge were pragmatic. Rest a day, get treatment, hit the gym, practice, practice, practice. That’s the beauty of the NBA, there’s always another game right around the corner.

Portland can take solace in knowing that at the very least they don’t have to play the Celtics again in 2010-11, or if they do it won’t be until the NBA Finals. They can look forward to next season, knowing that they’ll get at least one good shot at this team.

A couple of brief thoughts on the evening as a whole:

• Nicolas Batum played only 14 and a half minutes Thursday, leaving in the middle of the second quarter and not returning. Nic complained of pain in his knee, there’s a shocker, and will undergo an MRI tomorrow morning. Nicolas was upbeat when addressing the media following the game, saying that he knows when he needs surgery, like when he knew that he needed shoulder surgery, and he knows that he DOES NOT need surgery this time. The MRI will tell for sure. As of right now losing Nic would be a big time bummer. LaMarcus said post game that he’s somewhat numb to the injury thing, and as a whole I’m sure Blazer Nation is also. That being said, everyone should do whatever they can in their power to ensure that Nicolas does not need surgery. I feel like having written that sentence I may have just jinxed him.
• One surprising side effect of Nicolas going down to injury was minutes for Luke Babbitt. It wasn’t Luke’s finest performance, but then again he did spend some time guarding Paul Pierce which isn’t easy for anyone. In the first half Luke didn’t seem to want to shoot. In the second half he launched a corner three on one of his first possessions. I couldn’t tell which was a better strategy, having Luke shoot or having Luke not shoot, the outcomes were strikingly similar. Post game, Nate said he wanted Luke to shoot when he was on the floor. The good thing for Luke is that teams are likely not going to defend him. That means he’ll get open looks, he just has to knock them down. In eight and a half minutes of play, Luke scored two points, making 1-of-2 field goals.
• The Blazers marketing team is pushing the three goggles to the limit. Cardboard three goggles were on sale for the first time Thursday night. It didn’t help with Portland’s shooting though. The Blazers were 4-of-16 from deep, with three of those deep balls coming at the end of the fourth quarter.
• There were lots of Celtics fans in the Rose Garden Thursday. Dante Cunningham called out Rip City on Twitter to that end following the game.
• Speaking of Celtics fans, Bill Walton was in the house Thursday. He and I share a birthday in case you were wondering.

Thursday's game was one of the more physical games of the season. Luckily nobody was hurt expect Paul Pierce and Nicolas Batum. Photo courtesy of the Oregonian.

Box Score

Standings

Twitter: @mikeacker | @ripcityproject

The scouting report told me Aldridge doesn't drive! Full of lies, you scorpion scouting report. (Source: Yardbarker.com)

You can have your Rudy’s, Jerryd’s, Oden’s and Martell’s. For my money, LaMarcus Aldridge is the most polarizing Blazer, if only because there really is no consensus on the consistent power forward. Everyone seems to want something new and different from Aldridge, few seem satisfied with what he is right now, but fewer still can argue that he shouldn’t be on the floor as much as possible.

Put all that together and you have our candidate for the most intense-yet-hypothetical Summer Reading course we’re going to prescribe.

Let’s begin with Aldridge as he is right now.  You know most of what he can do offensively. You can, most of the time, throw the ball to Aldridge on the blocks and expect to have a reasonable chance at scoring in isolation situations (0.91 points per post-up possession), with Aldridge counting faceup jumpers, turnaround-jumpers over either shoulder, a running hook shot and a drop-step countermove among his repertoire. You know he prefers to work off the left block, to spin over his right shoulder and that he’s not going to create enough contact to get to the line very often (3.9 attempts per game in 09-10).

Aldridge is unselfish, but doesn’t take a lot of risks with his passes (two assists per game) and hasn’t shown, outside of a few glimpses, a knack for hitting cutters out of the high or low post. He can set decent screens, but almost always is popping out to a spot 16-23 feet from the rim for a long-two. He has the hands and speed to be dangerous in transition, when the Blazers are pushing the ball, and is improving his defensive recognition, which includes the ability to work out of the double team.

Put it all together and you have a versatile player who can score in a variety of ways, but whose team doesn’t always take advantage of his skills in the open court and who sometimes has difficulty contributing to the offense when his jumper (41 percent from 16-23 feet) is shaky.

Defensively, he’s improved in some areas and just been adequate in others. Aldridge allowed .88 points per pick-and-roll he defended, just 56 in total, and once he was paired with Andre Miller in the starting lineup, himself a good PnR defender, Aldridge appeared to gain confidence in his guard recovering and thus hedged out on the ball handler more consistently. But his aggressiveness as a help defender and in running off shooters leaves much to be desired, and his one-on-one post defense can range from adequate to strong, depending on the type of opposition.
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