And we’re back in technicolor. Poor a little liquor out for my old laptop which crashed and burned. Stream of consciousness time. Shoutout to everyone in Portland right now, I know some of y’all are going stir crazy being snowed in and what not. Thought I’d show a little love.
Also while I’m being very 2001-ish, shoutout to the bandwagon fans who found their way back on. Gotta love em’.
Brandon Roy. There isn’t much else for me to say about what Brandon Roy did on Thursday night. It was the greatest performance I have ever seen from a Portland Trail Blazer. And I hate hyperbole. I’ve watched the game 3 times since Thursday. It was great
(Also, shoutout to the black guy who danced shirtless on Thursday night. I only hope you replace the Dancing Lady. Kind of. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, Blaze of Love has the GIF.)
Today, Joe Freeman ponders an identity crisis. I’m not really struggling with that so much. I’m not sure the Blazers are supposed to have an identity right now. This is a team in progress, still learning a lot and they shouldn’t have a specific identity. Plus watching the Blazers I don’t have a feel like the past two years where I didn’t know what we were doing. A team like the Kings has a true identity crisis. They just play, you can’t really point to one thing that they do well….or one thing they could do well. At this point the Blazers are kind of chamelons and that may develop into their identity. Right now I think depth is something we can all hang our hats on. Obviously the Blazers want it to be defense. We’ll see how that turns out.
Speaking of defense, on Friday, Kelly Dwyer over at Ball Don’t Lie put his target on the Blazers and I really can’t disagree with anything he said. It’s refreshing to see what I guess I’d consider an “outside” opinion aka someone who isn’t religiously watching the Blazers say what I think. When our defense is on we’re dangerous, when we’re not it gets ugly. He closed the piece with this:
“Get giddy about the Blazers, but understand that this team still has a lot of work to do. And then get giddy again knowing that this team has the players and talent to work on what needs to be done. “
Bingo, bango, bongo. This is a team who has accelerated past what we thought they could be at this point and still has a very high ceiling. Giddy indeed.
I had a brilliant idea during my brief blogging hiatus. “Hey let me hand out some awards for the 1/3 of the season” Well…uh…Blazer’s Edge beat me to it. Le sigh. I haven’t been this disappointed since I found out the Hills was fake. And I’m still gonna do it so bam.
Non-Blazer related note but did you know Jamal Crawford is one of 4 NBA players to drop 50 with three different teams? Seriously. Bernard King, Moses Malone, Wilt Chamberlain and Jamal Crawford. Where’s Chuck to say ‘That ain’t right’.
Non-Blazer related note number two is LeBron James making about half of the GM’s in the league ill just by putting the words ‘considering’ and ‘extension’ in the same sentence. I’m definitely not getting caught up in all that but I think it’s hilarious knowing that at least 4-5 GM’s fainted when they heard that. I wonder if their reaction was similar to that of a father of an unplanned pregnancy who hears the mother say ‘I might keep it’.
We’ll be back in the AM with some thoughts on the Denver game. Just to give you a head’s up I can’t stand the Blazers playing in Denver, I’ll try not to be as emo as I was during the Suns preview but no promises.