This is where I will rant about the team I love/loathe, most likely to an audience of one.

Let's start with the minor grievances.

1. ) Drafting Oden. Durant = sure thing. Oden = Injury History, minimal offensive skills, especially against pro-level competition. We had (note: had) Randolph, Pryzbilla, Magliore, and Alridge up front and no one besides Roy to help Randolph on offense. Durant would have been an obvious fit. Screw hindsight, I said it from day one. Billboards said "Honk once for Oden, Twice for Durant". I *always* honked twice. And so did Pritchard.. Poor Bastard.. He will be remembered for this, and he *loved* Durant and his game. I'm not sold Pritchard got to make the final decision.

2. ) Shipping out Randolph for Franchise and the Pu Pu Platter. This might have worked had we actually *played* Franchise. Instead we paid him almost entirely in full and... let him go? Roy is the only player on our roster who can put up 30 in 48 minutes unguarded in *practice*. We could really use some offense. I predict 3 maybe 4 Chalupa (read: 100 pt) games in the Rose Garden this year, all in overtime.

3. ) Frontcourt : We had Pryzbilla, Magliore, Aldrige, Lafrentz, and Randolph. We now have Aldrige, Pryzbilla, Oden (RIP), ummm... McRobets (RIP), and Channing Frye. Weeeeeeeeeeee.

4. ) Point Guard : We have Steve Blake to man the offense, Sergio to come off the bench, Roy to play minutes at the point, and a tradable commodity in Jarret Jack who may actually be able to fetch us a player who could potentially a. ) shoot a basketball, and b. ) make the shot. I know, I know, it's a lot to ask for, but I have faith.

5. ) Goodbye Ime Udoka. Your stellar defense, timely shooting, awesome work ethic, and bargain price tag are worthless to us when we are trying to find time for Travis Outlaw, who has not only contributed nothing in 4 years (and was resigned long term for that (complete lack of) accomplishment), and Martell Webster (Who we wasted a nose-bleed high-draft pick on, has contributed nothing, and is in line for an Outlaw-like extension soon). In case either of these players don't fill Udoka's shoes (they won't), we also have Phoenix cast-off James Jones, who by default needs to start because he actually a. ) plays defense, b. ) occasionally rebounds, and c. ) occasionally scores in bunches. Which are 3 things the two incumbant SF's do *not* do.

6. ) Brandon Roy is looking at the tailbone-related issues, his shaky foot/ankle problems, the possibility of surgery either in the off-season or sooner, and little to no reason to believe anyone is going to be able to take the scoring pressure off of him. He may be double-teamed before he even hits the half-court stripe all season. Good luck, Brandon.

7. ) Lamarcus Aldrige is being touted as the X-factor this year, and he's going to need to be everything we hope he can. We need rebounding. We need scoring. We need defensive presence. And we need to keep Channing Frye and Raef Lafrentz in warmups for at least 40 minutes a night. Anything less is a complete disaster.

8. ) We got that foreign kid at SG that may actually play on this continent this season. I'm too lazy to look up his name. If he can score, let's make him play the 3 and be done with it. Sign me up. Viva La Rasa!

Frye is going to be a decent player.

You're going to regret ripping on Oden at some point.

Only if you personally have a plan to kneecap Durant and.. umm... the other twenty-something guys who were drafted in the first round. Oden has SAM BOWIE depressed/celebrating at the same time right now. I'm serious. Local/National news has been interviewing Sam Bowie and you can tell how mixed his feelings are. It's fascinating to watch.

Frye will make us forget Travis Outlaw. Possibly even more effectively than Travis Outlaw made us forget Travis Outlaw.

P.S. - I hope you are right. I would love to see Oden healthy and playing. I fully expect Oden to be in full swing and start to realize his potential in year 4, when we will either have to overpay/overvalue him once again or watch him leave town. I'm not sure how bad you realize this situation is really going to be. ^^^^^^ is the *upside*.

I sense a very strong aura of anti-homer homerism in this thread
I was in the Durant-all-the-way camp from day 1 but I never expected Oden to be a bust. he probably won't be but the team is definitely a mess after the changes they made to fit him in. Even with giving away Allen for virtually nothign, Oklahoma looks like it has a better base than Portland.

I think Brandon Roy alone will make the team gritty and at least tolerable to watch just like last year. They won't be infuriatingly bad like last years Celtics or anything like that.

Also, I get Sportsnet West in Canada and they always show a collection of Seattle and Portland games in the middle of the night so I'll make it my mission to diversify this thread.

36 seconds left and its looking like a loss.

Still a very good and competitive game by Portland. The assertion that Cappy was just being overly negative seems to be true. Aldridge came through in a big way in spite of Roy not doing anything.

With Oden the Spurs wouldn't have pissed about and probably still would have won but Portland is a good young team

Alridge looked *great* on offense. Of course, he was overmatched trying to take care of Duncan on the other end, but hell, he's a second year player, I'll let it slide.

The biggest surprise for me was Martel Webster showing a pulse. He looked like a poor-man's Rashard Lewis tonight, scoring in bunches and... uh.... well, scoring in bunches.

Frye and Outlaw looked great off the bench. Blake will start eventually. We have a very solid bench considering we are missing some guys.

We may win 35, who knows? BTW- Anyone know why all the media experts are picking memphis to be better than .500? I'm not going out on a limb here to say that Portland >>>> Memphis, AINEC.

I'm stoked, we'll be ok this year. Just ok, nothing special, but that's good enough for me.

Of course, if Durant averages 25/10 I still reserve the right to hang myself by my shoelaces.

WOW. Never saw this coming:

We can't score.

Aldridge is going to be a monster though, it looks like. And this may be the best, most consistent 3 game stretch of Martel Webster's life, much less basketball career.

And since neither Blake or Jack play much D, why aren't we just playing Blake and bringing Sergio off the bench to keep the tempo going for the 2nd team. This is a far, far cry from a halfcourt team in any instance, anways. Let's go ahead and steal as many cheap baskets as we can.

I think the Grizz could def be .500ish FWIW. Deep at PG, Pau happy, Rudy Gay showing life, Darko being okay, Mike Miller being Mike Miller. It's a pretty solid team.

I agree to an extent. That team can score, even with Conley Jr racking up DNPs.

But..

Stoudamire-Gay-Miler-Pau-Darko? Who are they holding under 100 points? Ever? If you can't D up out west, you are simply not going to be able to do much. Plus, Miller and Mighty Mouse have injury histories, Gay is still quite young (but immensley talented), and Darko (although 22 and improving) hasn't done anything impressive yet.

Jury still way out on Memphis. I do like them better than the Blazers, though. We can't score and can't play D.. Makes it a bit harder

ATTENTION! Wednesday night is the Blazer's home opener!!!!

It's.. uhhhh... got a special promotion blasting over the local radio:

Greg Oden Bobble-Head doll night.

Yeah, just go ahead and kill me now.. Put the gun to my head and give me the sweet, merciful sleep to make this nightmare end. lol.

Odds of getting that free-for-Blazers-Scoring-100-Points Chalupa along w/ Bobblehead... 37,219-1.

aldridge is becoming a stud now if we could only win on the flippin road

wtf was that we were up by like 25 at one point and we lose

Yeah, he is top notch on the offensive end, and (even as limited as he is defensively) an upgrade on the defensive side of the ball over Z-bo. He's so young and talented. He's gonna be great for years. I was praying for 16-8 preseason, and it looks a lot closer to 20-10. Color me impressed.



We don't bring it with the defense and intensity for 48 minutes. We've survived at home, but that formula just kills us on the road. You can't kill a team by enough on the road to skate for 50% of the game, it's just not possible in the NBA.

We're just not defensively imposing. Blake and Sergio play essentially no D... Jack can bring it at times.. Roy's not healthy enough to have full range on his lateral movements (even a 1/4 step loss is deadly against NBA 2 guards)... Webster is still a poor man's Rashard Lewis (up to 20 points, but no rebounds/ast/stl/blk to speak of).. Aldridge is still learning, and actually trying *too* hard and racking up a ton of unecessary fouls... Frye and Pryzbilla can't even relax and ge comfortable in a rotation that changes depending on which side of the bed Nate wakes up on.

Essentially it breaks down to this:

Webster is *not* the answer. He's a streak shooter that does NONE of the other things an NBA team needs from a 3 (help defense, boards on both ends, passing, weak-side blocks, etc...).

Aldridge is too valuable to our offense to be overexterting on the defensive end. The hardest thing in basketball to drill into a younger player's head can be the fact that giving up an easy 2 when Blake or Jack get beat is far more +EV in the long run than him picking up that 3rd foul midway into the second quarter. A veteran knows this instinctively.. Give him more time to understand this. I'm not sure Sheed ever trully did until he got to Detroit. Yikes.. I just came to that realization.

Frye needs to start. If this team is supposed to fun and gun, it can't start Joel at the 5. Period. Frye is active enough to even overcome the shortcomings of a smaller starting lineup. This would be an even easier decision if we had a legitimate 3 who could help on the defensive end.

Notice how all these points are defensive. This is because the Blazers simply can't score. They won't outscore *anyone* in a shootout. They need to win with blood sweat and tears on the defensive end.

Having Odom back solves this problem, by the way. And allows us to finally ship Webster/Jack(or Sergio)/Outlaw out in return for a quality small-forward.

Travis outlaw is sick, gg tonight. Very back and forth

He's showing flashes. Last year he was lights out for about a week and then he got hurt and wasn't the same.

Our first road win of the year!!! yay!

all i know is that at the end of the season the blazers need to have a better record than the sonics(i bet my brother in law a hundo ,before oden injured his knee)

Your brother might as well have set that $100 on fire. Blazers might have the sonics shut out already. lol.

I mean, we're bad.. but ain't nowhere near THAT bad. Durant doesn't even have a legitimate 2nd option. Green comes off the bench fer chrissakes.. on THAT team.

god they love giving up leads

Line of the night:

Martell Webster, GF 21 minuts, 2-6 shooting 0-1 treys, 0-0 FTs, 0 Reb, 0 AST, 0 STL, 1 PF, 4 pts.

Ladies and gentleman, your starting Small Forward!

Let the James Jones era begin!

And a moment of silence for Kevin Durant, if only he was actually in a better place...

we won five in a row woot woot

And not just home games, at that. The Utah win, without Aldridge, was HUUUGE.

This team is really something. I can't even fathom what they could achieve with Oden out there at the 5.

Special shout-out to Martell and Travis, who both finally look ready to take the next big step toward being solid, reliable day-to-day contributors for this team. I personally never thought I would see the day

seven in a row!!!!!!!!!!!!

wanna know the best part? we are actually playing good on the road. keep it up rip city

And without Aldridge to boot. It's a win-win. I'm actually starting to get excited.. We could have a legit shot at nabbing that 8 seed come May...

When I saw that I was shocked.

So were the Blazers, believe me. Most of it without Aldridge, the truly amazing part.

I may be quite a bit premature with the whole "8th seed" lobbying, as it stands now:

1. Spurs 2. Suns 3. Mavs 4. Hornets! 5. Lakers 6. Nugs 7. Jazz 8. Warriors 9. Rockets & Blazers..

So.... tough road to hoe.. As it stands now, the Lakers, Hornets, and esp Warriors are playing a bit above their heads. The Nuggets and Rockets are always good for a couple key season-ending injuries by Valentine's Day. So it's within the realm of possibility.

It will be interesting to see if the Hornets can keep up with the pace they've set. They have the 4th best conference record, too, which really does speak volumes. You know what is *really* amazing? The Blazers have the 5th best conference record in the West.. That's something to impress the buddies with at the water cooler today.

we only scored 80 points and we won, i cant believe this streak right now

Well, we're not going to keep scoring 100, so get used to it.

Good times, tho.

ten in a row!!!!!!!!!!! this is awesome

Yeah, another Martel Webster sighting.

And holy cow.. that 50 ft shot Jarret Jack hit on the run at the end of the first quarter was INSANE.

This team is going to be very good next year.

This team is somehow very good right now..

Man, you guys are tearing it up!

I don't really know what's up with Oden, but since he's with you guys, I'm rooting for win #11 Keep the streak alive!

I graduated from high school when Oden was a junior at LN.. about a half hour away from mine. I remember watching his games when it was him and Mike Conley just tearing it up all over the place. Then after watching what those two did at OSU, I only wish they could've stayed together in the NBA

What's up with Oden anyway? And gl Blazers

people are gonna be all over the bandwagon next year

the sonics are terrible how half of their team is even in the league is amazing

He is out till next year.

Anyone else find it amusing that Aldridge and Roy get a chance to prove themselves to a national audience and have just horrendous games. Yeah, Roy went from mediocre to below-average as the game progressed, but it was truly the Channing Frye/Jarrett Jack show.

And I <3 seeing like 8 guys with over 20 minutes and everyone contributing a little.

I'm *still* mystified we are scoring enough to beat anybody, much less win 11 in a row. This team is going to give people nightmares next season.

Scroll up, read what I said about you will end up liking Frye.

You've 50% convinced me. Now I want to regret everything I've said about Oden.

How bizzaro is it that Channing Frye is contributing and gelling with this team and Zach Randolph just got benched by the worst team in the Eastern Conference? lolololololol.

Not bizzaro at all. Randolph is an out of shape, gunning big man that doesn't like contact.

He's a cancer to any team he'll play on, I was surprised you were sad to see him go. His numbers don't mean anything. It is however very surprising how well the Blazers are playing, I don't think they can keep it up. Who knows though, but Oden is going to fit in very nicely.

Well, what I don't understand is how Zach isn't putting up silly point and rebound totals in the East, much like Jermaine O'Neal did once he escaped the Western Conference.

I was sad to see Zach go because he was our only proven scoring option besides Roy. And we are still attempting to locate someone besides Roy and Aldridge who can actually contribute on a nightly basis via scoring. Outlaw, Jack, Frye, and Webster have all shown flashes, but none has been consistent enough to make it happen. James Jones may very well be the 3rd best "scorer", and he's more heralded for his defense than anything.

As for the Blazers "keeping it up", I agree with you, the season is still far too young. Between the Jazz, Rockets, Nuggets and Warriors, 2 of those 4 are likely going to have to deal with the inevitable injury bug. As I've said before, the Blazers aren't truly one of the top 8 in the West top to bottom, but a couple of those "Top 8"s will drop off the map thanks to injuries, and bam, I can see the Blazers backing into the playoffs.

One thing is for certain. With their uptempo offense and sudden defensive intensity, we are NOT a team that opponents have penciled in on the calander under "easy win" anymore, home or on the road.

i thought for sure we would stop the streak to some terrible team such as the twolves tonight, but the streak is still alive baby!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Last night vs. Minnesota:

Travis Outlaw : 23 minutes, 7 points (3-7 FG), 6 rebounds, 4 assists, 1 steal, and 2 blocks.

James Jones: 25 minutes, 12 points (4-8 FG/2-4 3PG), 3 rebounds, 1 assist, 1 steal, 0 turnovers.

Jarret Jack: 30 minutes, 14 points (4-10 FG/2-5 3PG), 4 boards, 5 assists, 1 turnover.

Channing Frye: 20 minutes, 13 points (5-10 FG), 7 boards (5 off boards), 2 assists, 1 steal.

That's all bench, folks.

As a team, Blazers shot 49.4% from the field, 42% from 3, 72% from the charity stripe.

Pulled 47 boards, had a 28/12 Assist to Turnover Ratio, 8 steals and blocked 6 shots.

That's some hustle and good decision-making in action.

I am ecstatic about the development of Channing Frye and Travis Outlaw this season. Outlaw is *finally* becoming what he teased us about becoming for the last 3 years. James Jones is a solid pickup that we essentially stole from Phoenix, to fill in the role Ime Udoka played last year.

Jarret Jack is 10x as deadly coming off the bench, and seems to be realizing he's still getting 30 minutes a night, and absolutely destroying the second-tier opposition when he first gets into the game. Seem to notice how we always seem to make that run in the second quarter? That's Jack, Outlaw, and Jones bringing it hard.

Our only real worry at the moment is Webster, who may benefit by coming off the bench himself. I'd like to see us start James Jones at the 3, because, quite frankly, all Webster *is* is a shooter, and Jones is a better shooter than Webster, so why in gods name is Webster starting? Jones is 10x the defender and rebounder Webster is. If Webster isn't hot early, he's wasting space on the court. We spent a high pick to get him, and I sincerely hope that isn't factoring into this decision.

i agree webster needs to start picking it up, probably would have benefited him to go to college but who in the hell is gonna go to college when looking at top ten draft money

This point escapes a lot of people. Who in god's name would pursue "college education" and risk career-ending injury over locking up a multi-million dollar contract?

A person who would actually do that would *need* education, although still not as much as they'd need millions of dollars.

i hope we can come back i hate utah

just another reason to hate the jazz

Look at it another way: I'm actually in a positive mood about this.

It sucks that the streak is over.. But the nation is talking about US for heavens sake, we're neck and neck for the division lead, and 2 months ago we would have shrugged our shoulders in the 3rd quarter and said "This isn't our night".

Admit it.. There wasn't a single moment of the first 45 minutes where we didn't honestly believe we could win that game. That's a huge positive.

Aldridge had a career night, too.. good for him.

nice we won, i fell asleep at halftime and it wasnt looking great but they pulled it out. If somehow we could play 500 ball on the road the rest of the way out we will definately make the playoffs

Agreed.

Random amusing Blazer-related news of the night: Zach Randolph served his game suspension tonight.

Minus Zach, the Knicks took the World Champion Spurs till the final ticks of the clock. lol.

Maybe the whole "addition by subtraction" concept has more merit than we realize.

I'd really like to pay back Utah for ending the streak, btw. Go Blazers!

no roy and we stomp the jazz why the hell couldn't we do this the other night, the streak would still be alive

Well, remember, they didn't exactly "have" Kirilenko last night...

Oh, and apparently space aliens have invaded Martell Webster's body. 26 points in 26 minutes? Really? I don't know if I'm more impressed or in shock. Well done, Web.

Not much else to say, we looked great tonight. Let's pray Roy can bounce back. We are in a world of trouble without him. It's hard enough to score points without him commanding double-teams and such.

i didnt see kirilenko wasnt playing,. I live in the northwest and fsn plays every stupid ****ing sonics game but never a blazer game maybe after a good year this year next year they will be on tv more