Wesley Matthews contributed 31 points, and Portland handed the Cleveland Cavaliers their 24th straight loss of the season. Photo courtesy of the AP.

I’m not going to spend too much time on this one. For all that the Portland Trail Blazers fan base has had to endure over the last season, the Cleveland Cavaliers’ faithful have had it worse. Much worse. Imagine instead of being hurt, Brandon Roy left the Blazers to join two other superstars in a city that for shear cultural cache and awesomeness makes Portland look like, well Cleveland. Then imagine that he did it on national television. I’m sure we’ve all run this scenario through a time or two, and can imagine what it must be like to be a Cavs fan right about now.

What you saw on the court Saturday was a franchise depleted by injury versus a franchise depleted, period. Cleveland came out and played for the entire 48 minutes Saturday night, but it simply wasn’t enough, as it hasn’t been enough for Cleveland now 24 times in a row.

Coming in to Saturday’s game, the talk, and the pressure seemed to be squarely on the shoulders of the Blazers. This is a team that has been struggling on the road, and more than that has been struggling to string meaningful wins together all season. Denver, and then Indianapolis were expositions of Portland at their worst. Stagnant offense, lazy defense, zero energy. That same combination on Saturday could have spelled doom for the Blazers. And at times it almost did. Portland did something, though, that made the difference. They shot the ball well. Coach Nate McMillan has been saying it for months. When the Blazers shoot well they win. Portland is a team full of streaky shooters, Nicolas Batum, Rudy Fernandez, Wesley Matthews, to a man it’s anyone’s guess how hot or cold they are going to be on any given night. Saturday they were hot; all of them.

Here are the lines for Portland’s wing players, starting with Nic. Batum was almost perfect from deep, and just as almost perfect from the floor. Nic was 6-of-8 from the field, and an incredible 5-of-6 from three. Batum’s only miss came when leaper Jamario Moon swatted his last three attempt into the third row. Nic played an almost flawless offensive game, but I would suggest this, next time he hits five threes in a row, throw in a pump fake on the sixth. Nicolas has the length to attack the rim with the best small forwards in the league. He tends to go either all drives or all J’s. A mix would take his game to that every so important NEXT LEVEL.

Wesley Matthews was nearly as consist from deep as Nicolas, and was even better going to hole. Wesley shot 11-of-17 from the field, and hit 5-of-7 from three. Wesley’s 31 points showed yet again that when he gets going, like really going, like 30 points or more, Portland is hard to beat. Rudy wasn’t quite as hot as his shooter brethren, but still provided some much needed offense. Rudy was 2-of-5 from range and 6-of-10 from inside. Over the last few outings, Rudy has started to look much more comfortable attacking the rim. He is no longer wheeling out of control at the basket, and his consistency has improved because of it. Saturday, the Blazers were completely unable to put the Cavs away. Every time Portland built a lead, Cleveland would respond with a run. Having hot knock-down shooters was the reason Portland was able to come away from the Q with a win.

Saturday wasn’t all good. Andre Miller could not get it going early. Luckily he overcame a slow start to pump in some important hoops in the evening’s final quarter. The real downside to Saturday though, and something that may or may not linger, was an injury sustained by Dante Cunningham. Luckily it wasn’t a knee or an ankle, Blazer killers both, and hopefully he’ll be back on the court sooner than later. Dante got the starting nod Saturday, due to the complete lack of size on the Cavs’ roster, and in the first half he took an inadvertent elbow to the face from Samardo Samuels after making a clean strip on the ball. DC left the game and didn’t return. The elbow may have broken some bones in Dante’s face, possibly around the eye. If that is the case, which we all hope it isn’t, this isn’t something to take lightly. Hopefully DC will be able to return. He’s been stalwart off the bench, and may be a truly un-fillable hole in the rotation.

Along with handing the Cavs a record breaking loss, or record tying depending on what time frame you’re looking at, Portland escaped another O-fer road trip. The Blazers return to Portland Monday to take on the Chicago Bulls, with the hope of jumping right back in to the playoff race.

Just a few quick thoughts:

• Many times this season Portland has looked lost in the free-for-all style that seems to be the favorite of many of the sub .500 teams in the NBA. The Blazers almost let Saturday slip away when the game opened up in the final quarter and change. One sequence that stood out and showed Portland’s lack of freestyle skill came late in the fourth.  Portland claimed a rebound with under a minute to play and leading by four, and turned to take the ball up the court. The Cavs were unsure if they should foul, and for a moment or two there seemed to be actual confusion on the court. Instead of putting something together on the fly, with no defense set, and sealing the game, Portland called a time out. On the time out set play, Andre Miller missed an open jumper. It was a moot point because the Cavs didn’t make a basket on their possession, and Portland iced the game from the line, but I would like to see this team play a little better in the open game. I don’t know how that’s done, by Nate needs to work some chaos into his game plan. It’s pretty clear that planning for stuff has little to no effect on how actual games actually end up.
• As of this writing Portland and Memphis are tied for the eighth spot in the West. Memphis and Portland have played twice, each team winning once. The Blazers play the Grizz only one more time this season, and it’s Portland’s last home game. Conventional wisdom says that these two teams will likely be at this same spot in the standings at that time. Mark your calenders know, Rip City, Tuesday, April 12th is going to likely be one hell of a game.

Dante Cunningham may be the only person in NBA history to have a knee injury on his forehead. Photo courtesy of the AP.

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Twitter: @mikeacker | @ripcityproject

I feel like this is over. I feel like in a day or two we are going to wake up and the Portland Trail Blazers we love to watch every day will be distant memory. It was bad when we lost to New Jersey, it was critical after Philly, the Boston game DOES NOT COUNT, and now we’ve hit the bottom.

The Blazer muster only 10 points in the third period. TEN POINTS. At what point do we flip the switch and call it a night, when Portland comes out and does not tally a single point on the board for 12 minutes? The Blazers had their chances, this is the Wizards for god sake, but instead of Rudy Fernandez or Brandon Roy or Wesley Matthews or Nicolas Batum, or anybody with the word Portland across their chest, stepping up and hitting a big time shot, it was Cartier Martin. Instead of Marcus Camby or LaMarcus Aldridge making a game saving defensive stop, it was JaVale McGee.

The Blazers tried, they put up some valiant attempts as the final seconds ran out on their last chance to salvage a humiliating road trip, but turning on the effort with 25 seconds to play in the fourth quarter is too little too late. Plus, it’s pretty damn hard to win a basketball game when the point differential is larger than the total number of possessions left on the shot clock. Chucking up airballs from three doesn’t make one bit off difference when you’re down five with under 10 ticks on the clock.

Maybe some of us saw this coming, maybe some others of us, like me, hid or heads in the sand and purposefully did not see this coming. Either way, it’s totally irrelevant. It came, and ladies and gentleman, I fear it may be too late. The NBA season is long, yes, and were not even twenty games in. But the NBA season is only so long. 82 games. 20 games is basically one quarter of the season. Six games is almost 10 percent. We can recover from this. But we can only wait so long to let that happen.

The questions is can we wait. And it’s not a question for you and me to answer. It’s a question that will be answered by Rich Cho, and smart money says we know Rich’s answer sooner than later.

I only had a few thoughts as I watched this slip away:

• What is happening?
• Where did we go wrong?
• Is it possible at this point to even think about managing expectations?
• What part of this mess is the first to go? Nate? Andre Miller or Marcus Camby, old guys that probably don’t want to spend their last few seasons on a losing team. Brandon Roy or LaMarcus Aldridge? Who knows.

I know this is all a little extreme, and I apologize for that, but only slightly. I have been a Blazer fan all my life. This hurts. And this is embarassing.

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Twitter: @mikeacker | @ripcityproject

Wesley Matthews has been a consistent bright spot during Portland's five-game slide. Photo courtesy of the AP.

Under a minute left in Wednesday’s game, and I found myself standing beside my couch in the living room screaming at my television. Portland looked dead in the water at the beginning of the fourth period, and I had been resigned to the fate that I expected. So many melt downs in the fourth quarter. Obviously this was simply one more. But Wednesday something different seemed to be happening. The Blazers some how put together a 15-0 run, a run of four points more than they scored in the entire fourth quarter against the Philadelphia 76ers, and then a jumper in the lane from Brandon Roy cut the score to 96-95. I had one distinct feeling as I screamed at the TV, and it might not be the one you’d think.

I was angry. I was angry because if Portland had played with half as much heart, energy, and fight in their two previous games they would have rolled into Boston after crushing Philly and New Jersey in the days before. They would not be in the middle of a morass that now includes five straight losses. We fans would not be knee deep in speculation as to where Portland is going to land in the 2011 lottery. As it is, Ray Allen pulled his head out and drilled a back breaker, and Portland’s valiant attempt against Boston counts for nothing more than the losses the team has already sustained on their now 0 and 3 road trip.

Or maybe not. Two things happened Wednesday night that could be a turning point for Portland. Starting in the first quarter it was clear that the Blazers were interested in attacking the rim. It didn’t always look nice and it didn’t always work, but getting closer to the rim is going to make it a hell of a lot easier for Portland to generate offense. The Blazers scored 42 points in the paint. Although that wasn’t too much more than Boston’s 38, you have to look at the difference in personnel. Boston has Shaq, who probably has scored 80% of his more than 20K lifetime points in the paint; Kevin Garnett, who likes to spot up but has no problem getting to the rim; and plenty of other guys with the MO of putting their head down and attacking the bucket.

The second thing Portland did Wednesday night that could signal a turn around at least for right now is actually two things. They both happened in the fourth quarter and they are related. Everybody knows, without the help of the constant reminders from Mike and Mike, that Portland has been outscored in the fourth period in its last few outings by about half a million. Wednesday Portland outscored Boston 23-20 in the last 12 minutes, that’s an improvement. Directly related to this is that in many of the Blazer’s blown fourth quarters as soon as things start looking dour the guys in black and red were quick to check-out. With just over five minutes to play Kevin Garnett pushed Boston’s lead to 16. Pregame, losing by less than 20 would have felt good, at halftime those feelings were replaced by that glimmer of hope that the Blazers would be capable of pulling off a miracle. But with five minutes left, in the cold harsh light or reality, it looked like we weren’t even going to have the good fortune of witnesses a 20-point loss. But like I said earlier, Portland didn’t pack it in. It made me angry at the time, but when the final horn sounded, I allowed myself to believe that a four-point loss against one of the best teams in the NBA on their home court might be just enough to start the journey into the light.

Of course, Portland still has one more game on this Eastern swing. A loss to Washington on Friday, and we might be back to square one. Or really square negative one.

If the Blazers needed to forget about their last two fourth quarters, they might do well to remember Wednesday’s. They played with heart, they looked like they belonged on the court, and they took one of the top teams around to the bitter end. If we are in the market for moral victories, which at this point we might be, Wednesday’s loss meets the criteria.

Quick thoughts:

• Armon Johnson got bumped on Wednesday for Patty Mills. Mills has never played a meaningful moment in his professional career, and Wednesday I would say he made the most of his opportunity. Mills’ stat line was less than memorable, eight minutes played, one rebound, two assists, and two fouls, missing his only field goal attempt, but he didn’t turn the ball over at all. Johnson got the boot for turnovers. He’s the better player, but what the Blazers need is a reliable ball handler working with the second unit. I’m not saying Patty’s that guy, but getting minutes in a big game has to mean something. Patty did throw a nice look away pass on the fast break and a sweet lob to LaMarcus Aldridge.
• Keeping track of the other roster shakeup, it might be safe bet to say that Nicolas Batum is going to be coming off the bench for a little while. Wesley Matthews showed yet again that he can bring it on offense. His 23 points led all Blazers, and was second only to Paul Pierce’s 28. Matthews was 5-of-7 from deep. If he can get it going like this against teams that aren’t 7-1 at home, and one or two more guys can chip in with reliable offense there could be a modicum of hope after all.
• Matthews made two big plays in the fourth quarter, but only one of them counted. He turned a steal into a fast break bucket that extended Portland’s late run, and he pulled down a rebound on Ray Allen’s first dagger attempt. Unfortunately in Boston when you get fallen on by Kevin Garnett that’s a foul on you. I’m going to make myself feel better, and blame everything on the refs.
• Speaking of fouls, Sean Marks returned Wednesday, becoming the first Portland big man this season to go down with an injury and COME BACK. Marks bricked three shots in a row and collected five fouls in eight minutes. I love the effort from Marks, and it’s unfair to dump too hard on this guy, but it will be a breath of fresh air when Joel Przybilla comes back. That could be as soon as Friday. Here’s hoping.

The combined age of these three players is easily over one hundred. Photo courtesy of the AP.

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Twitter: @mikeacker | @ripcityproject