I’m not going to recap Friday’s game, I think at this point we’re a little beyond that. I am going to say this. Earlier this week I was positive. I was able to overlook a few meltdowns at home against two teams that come the end of this regular season will be competing with the Lakers for the NBA Finals. I was able to look ahead, see a few “easy wins,” one sure loss, and think, hey it could be worse, and we’re right around the corner from breaking out and making a big run. Tonight, I don’t feel that. I don’t feel that at all.
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.
Twitter: @mikeacker | @ripcityproject