Get used to seeing this, Blazer fans Credit: Steve Dykes-US PRESSWIRE

Well played Portland, well played indeed. Of course the Blazers have to know at this point what winning games like Sunday’s means. Of course they know that starting Hasheem Thabeet at center for the injured Joel Przybilla instead of moving LaMarcus Aldridge to center and starting J.J. Hickson at the power forward is probably a much more efficient way to tank. And of course they know that the idea of crawling out of a three-game hole in 13 games is just enough to make every professional basketball fan in Portland have an aneurism.

Whatever. I’m over it (for now). I’m done talking about tanking versus pushing for the Playoffs. I feel like right now that’s been done to death. We all know it’s in the team’s best interest to lose games. We also know the company line for at least the next few weeks is that this team thinks they can still make the Playoffs.

Personally, I know longer care. I’m not going to root for the Blazers to lose. Not now; not ever. And in that spirit, I’m happy to say that Sunday’s win made me very happy. I’m interested in seeing a Portland team play with pride, take care of home court, and not get swept in a season series by the Minnesota Timberwovles. The T-Wolves are one day going to be a contender, assuming that Ricky Rubio returns from ACL surgery without missing much, but right now they’re not. They beat the pants off of Portland twice in less than a week, two wins they earned and most definitely deserved. It’s a testament to the Blazers’ will that they didn’t let Minny get that third straight win.

Portland was all about offense Sunday, which is good, because high-scoring teams draw large crowds and large crowds are good. The Blazers didn’t play a ton of defense, but the best defense is always a good offense. Giving up 106 points is OK as long as you score at least 107.

Sunday Portland’s starters set the pace, a starting lineup, that I might add, will probably start to look pretty familiar  come 2012-13. LaMarcus is not a natural five, and J.J. Hickson is even shorter than LA. If it were up to me, I would move Hickson to center and leave LaMarcus at power forward. I think Hickson would do better defensively on the few huge guys in the league (Andrew Bynum, Marc Gasol, and guys like that). There are enough teams that run a three forward front line that having two big but undersized pivot players isn’t terrible if both guys can score like J.J. and LA can. I imagine Hickson stays in the starting lineup, even when Joel comes back.

I don’t really have much more to add, except to say that I agree with Blazer sketch artists par excellence Maddison Bond who had this to say during Sunday’s second half:

I’ve never felt so good about watching the Blazers

It is April Fool’s Day, so there’s always a 50/50 chance he’s making a joke. Even if he is, then I’m the fool who believes him. It has felt good watching these Blazers play. And I bet it feels good for them to beat a team that’s had their number this season, a Wolves team that has basically assumed a role the Blazers owned not that long ago.

There are more big games to come, that’s for sure. Knowledgeable Blazer fans shake their heads and sigh every time Mike Rice mentions the Playoffs, and they’re right to do it. But I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, if there are games left to be played why shouldn’t Portland play to win?

Now go enjoy season two of Game of Thrones.

Box Score

Standings

Dunking with Wolves

Email me: mike.acker1@gmail.com

Twitter: @mikeacker | @ripcityproject

Jonny Flynn looks to be getting the back-up PG minutes, although Nolan Smith has been feeling a little under the weather lately. Credit: Steve Dykes-US PRESSWIRE

Kevin Love and the Wolves go for the season sweep on Sunday. Credit: Steve Dykes-US PRESSWIRE

Blazers: 24-28 (5th Northwest Division)

Wolves: 25-28 (4th Northwest Division)

Game Details: Rose Garden Arena Portland, OR. 6:00 PM. TV: CSN, NBATV. Radio: 750 AM (KXTG)

Projected Blazer Starting Lineup: PG Raymond Felton (#5, 6’1”, North Carolina), SG Wesley Matthews (#2, 6’5”, Marquette), SF Nicolas Batum (#88, 6’8”, MSB Le Mans, France), PF J.J. Hickson (#21, 6’9”, North Carolina State). C Joel Przybilla (#10. 7’1”, Minnesota)

Projected Wolves Starting Lineup: PG Luke Ridnour (#13, 6’2”, Oregon), SG Martell Webster (#5, 6’7”, Seattle Prep High School), SF Wesley Johnson (#4, 6’7”, Syracuse), PF Derrick Williams (#7, 6’8”, Arizona), C Kevin Love (#42, 6’10” UCLA)

I’ll keep this one brief, since it’s Sunday. Check out my preview for the month of April if you want to see what I think about what Portland has left for 2011-12.

If the Blazers have anything real left to play for (and once again I’ll point you to my monthly preview) it is one thing: pride. If there is one instance in which pride should play a key role with this Portland team it would be in the scenario of the Blazers versus the Timberwovles.

The T-Wolves have been on-again off-again as the NBA’s Hot Young Team To Watch. A title that should drive Portland crazy, because they used to own it. Minnesota is a fun team, with a lot of young talent, a budding super-duper star in Kevin Love, and a coach that knows how to win big at the NBA level. They’re the team doing everything right, as opposed to Portland, the once HYTTW that blew up and did everything wrong. So there’s that.

There’s also this. Before this season, the Blazers couldn’t lose to the Wolves even if they tried. From 2007 to 2011, Portland beat Minnesota 16 straight times. In 2011-12, the T-Wolves are one game away from sweeping the season series with the Blazers. Talk about a turn around.

In the coming season, Portland is going to once again want to establish dominance of the inferior teams in their conference and their division. They’ve played big brother to Minnesota for so long, that it’s imperative that they re-gain that position of power going forward if they want to have a shot at establishing that dominance. A win Sunday would be a big step in that direction.

Not to mention, a win Sunday would prove that the Blazers do care that they were blown out twice by a team they owned for almost half a decade.

Quickly, a couple of things to watch for:

• J.J. Hickson: Can he have another big game, this time against Kevin Love? Hickson’s defense might be the weakest part of his game. K Love has become an offensive Goliath this season. Sunday will be J.J. chance to prove he’s up for even the most daunting defensive assignments.
• Will LaMarcus Aldridge play: That kind of speaks for itself don’t you think?
• Who will play back-up to Felton: Nolan missed time with an illness, does that mean he gets his minutes back, or will coach Kaleb Canales stick with Flynn? Remember Flynn was drafted by the Wolves, and might want to excel against his old team.

Email me: mike.acker1@gmail.com

Twitter: @mikeacker | @ripcityproject

Aldridge vs. Love will be a marquee match-up in the West for years to come. Hopefully Portland will be a Playoff team for most or at least some of that time. Credit: Greg Smith-US PRESSWIRE

I said this to somebody the other day: The best place for a sportswriter to be is covering a championship team. By sportswriter, I mean those that get paid to cover a team’s every breath, every pass, every time they say something on twitter to one of their fans about their favorite flavor of ice cream. A writer covering a championship team gets to say good things about the team they cover, which is rare. They get to be the center of the national media’s attention. They might even get on Jim Rome or PTI, or even better, get a freaking book deal.

The second best place to be for a sportswriter to find themselves is covering a team on the verge of falling apart. It’s there that the natural inclination to go negative is rewarded. It’s there that a statement can be made (the Blazers are the NBA’s biggest disappointment as a hypothetical) that’s one part maudlin hyperbole and one-part patently untrue (come on now the team being run by the NBA is 9-29) without anybody batting an eye.

The Blazers are very clearly in the latter category, and as this trip drags on and it becomes more and more obvious that whatever we thought this team was capable of achieving was wrong, there’s going to be plenty of talk about how disappointing this team is. There’s going to be plenty of people to blame. Coach Nate McMillan is going to be a punching bag. Same for Jamal Crawford. Same for Raymond Felton. Same for everybody on the roster.

Let me make a plea for sanity, and say that we try hard not to do that. When this season started, I too believed that this Portland team had something special going for it–following their win at Oklahoma City I had a breathless 30-minute conversation with my dad about how this team could make it to the Conference Finals and when it got there anything was possible–and I’m also disappointed that I was wrong. But banging my head against the wall isn’t going to help. Neither is pretending that this team was somehow destine to return the Blazers to their status as one of the West’s elite.

In many ways, this team is an experiment. An experiment that began three seasons ago when Portland started losing players to injury at such an unbelievable clip that the only explanation was some kind of curse, or–in an effort to sound like an informed person and not a lady with a crystal ball reading fortunes for a dollar apiece–the “injury bug.” Blazer brass decided way back then that instead of starting over from scratch, it made sense to find a guy to fill a gap here (Marcus Camby), or a guy to fill a gap there (Andre Miller), and another guy to take this position over here (Wesley Matthews, Gerald Wallace, Raymond Felton, Jamal Crawford, Kurt Thomas).

At the time it did make sense to replace players piecemeal. Those years ago we thought we’d get Brandon Roy back, and someday we might get Greg Oden, and that with those two and a couple of band-aid players we’d be right back in the thick of it. Unfortunately what we’re left with when that didn’t happen is a team made up of spare parts, with basically zero fluidity, that has now seemingly lost any faith they might have once had that they can win games. So the experiment has failed. This team needs to start over from the ground up. But it isn’t as if they were three-time champs. In three straight Playoff runs, they’ve yet to crack the second round. Let’s hold of on anointing a team “most disappointing” until they do something horrific, such as fail to make the second round following back-to-back trips to the Conference Finals.

And here’s the good news, a core of LaMarcus Aldridge, Wesley Matthews, and Nicolas Batum isn’t half bad. It isn’t Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, James Harden, and company. But it’s a start. Portland won’t even have to find a way to cobble together three lottery picks and an All-Star point guard in one draft then slog through a season or two of total rebuilding.

I don’t need to talk too much about Wednesday’s game. If you watched it, I imagine you saw the same thing I did. Portland played well at times, but missed way too many three-pointers. Minnesota played like a team about to break into the Playoff race for the first time in a long time, meaning they mostly played well, got a little scared when they played too well, but rode their big dog to the finish. They also made threes, 10 more than the Blazers to be exact.

Minnesota flat-out outplayed Portland when it mattered, and it did matter. Every time the Blazers got close, the Wolves hit a big three. Every time Portland got a turnover, Minnesota got one back. That’s the difference between a team that expects to win and plays with confidence (the Wolves), and a team that plays much of the game with their tails between their legs (the Blazers). I don’t know why this team doesn’t think they can win games anymore, but now that we’ve reached this point it makes sense to move on to something completely different.

Portland has six games left on this swing. I imagine they’ll get at least one victory. If they get more than one, two or three even, and they build a little bit of a hot streak, we’ll be in the favorable position of being able to point at this game (this stretch of games really) and say that this was the point in the season when things got as bad as they’d get. That falling to 11th place in the conference was what Portland needed to realize just how good they could be, and it was that realization that led to a furious comeback. Anything’s possible.

I don’t have anything else to add, beyond noting that LaMarcus Aldridge and Kevin Love is a match-up I’d pay to watch and that when the old guard at power forward finally lope off into the sunset (KG, Tim Duncan, and Dirk) there will be guys waiting to take their place, keeping that position at probably number two in overall importance. Also Luke Ridnour had a great game. And if I were asked to handicap it I would set the odds that he gets traded for Jamal Crawford or anybody else at close to zero.

Portland has a day off Thursday, then it’s East Coastin’ for real in Bean Town. Again, a winnable game.

Box Score

Standings

Dunking With Wolves

Email me: mike.acker1@gmail.com

Twitter: @mikeacker | @ripcityproject