We've all seen the amazing phenomenon over the last couple of seasons, where Blazer teams of various compositions come together to weather the storm of injuries and being perpetually undermanned. The results have been amazing. Players that you would never have imagined could have stepped up in a big way (Juwan Howard), others seem to have only been waiting for a chance to show what they had all along (LaMarcus). McMillan's coaching coupled with the desire of a depleted team to not lay down and be walked on has been great to watch However, I'm seeing a trend that isn’t encouraging.

Call me crazy; maybe I’m way off in my interpretation, but it has been a consistent problem in the last few years that the team has a tendency to push themselves only when they feel they have no other choice. In other words, with a depleted roster, in order to even compete guys have no choice but to step up and push themselves out of their comfort zones, demanding higher performance from themselves and each other. Yet when a full complement of players is available, many of them seem to coast and do not give the same effort, rather they seem to relax and depend on those around them to pick up the slack.

Marcus and Roy came back in last night's game and the rest of the team seemed to move slower, decisions weren't as crisp giving Atlanta the ability to adjust on defense almost effortlessly and the whole thing became an ugly disjointed mess.

I know the media is saying that it takes time to adjust the team to working with more bodies, but really that seems a very weak excuse to me. The team is not unfamiliar with Brandon Roy's game, neither are they a stranger to Marcus Camby. Yes, Gerald Wallace is significant new piece, yet his performance last night didn't seem to my mind at all forced or an imposition on what the rest of the team wanted to do.

What I'm seeing is a cultural issue: The team relaxes when everyone is available, the concentration isn’t there, and the urgency is gone. They are relying too much on everyone around them instead of doing what they’ve done when they had limited resources.

I don’t blame McMillan though; what is the guy to do when individuals give him Jekyll and Hyde performances? The rotation gets screwed up because one or more of the guys aren’t doing what you’ve come to expect from them and Nate takes them out of the game. Next, everyone is trying to figure out their role as all of a sudden they’re in the game during a period or playing a position that they’re not used to. It really is a cascading problem that has no easy solution.

Anyone that has struggled with their own attitude or self-discipline will know that pushing yourself to do what you don’t want to is always the correct solution, but conversely it can be the absolute hardest thing in the world to accomplish and transform within yourself. At times it takes losing and losing big over a long period of time to really drive the point home; that regardless of what I expect from everyone else around me, the only thing I can control and what I am ultimately responsible for is my own effort, energy and desire for success.

Perhaps the addition of another tough-minded veteran in Gerald Wallace will help some of the younger guys like LaMarcus, Batum, Rudy and Matthews make that transition in mindset. I know one thing, pride and “swag” are not going to get them all the way.

Time will tell. As much as dependence on those around you can be a good thing for a team, it is something I think the team is going to need to grow past to get to their potential. How that will look in implementation I have no idea. And while Nate McMillan has been the only coach that could get what he’s gotten out of the players individually when they needed it most, his eagerness to pull guys when they aren’t performing may just be the wrong recipe for the next step of their growth to a team that is willing to sell out regardless of who they have around them.

Am I crazy? What do you see in this situation?

I caught glimpses of it flitting around the arena when it thought most people were looking the other way. Bayless dragged it on court for a little bit of a cameo, but for the most part, the Blazers played without pride last night.

Pride is the missing ingredient in LaMarcus Aldridge's game. Pride was the missing factor for Rudy although he found it again last night. Pride seems to be missing from Nate's post-game analysis. The coach is calling for focus, but when you lose your perspective on where you are and what you went through to get there; those accomplishments should mean something to you and without those, focusing on the moment isn't going to give you the edge necessary to make the play in the face of a double-team.

Seriously LaMarcus, you use the excuse that you were double-teamed? What else do you expect? Its not supposed to be looked at as a detriment, its supposed to be a compliment man! They think you're that good even if you obviously don't. Play with a little speck of pride and take the ball inside! Push Amare' out of the way. Shove him onto his backside and go straight through him on your way to the hoop! At least attempt to draw the foul.

Focus helps, but focus doesn't cut it. Phoenix responded to Portland based on the fact that in the first game they were embarrassed. Steve Nash isn't going to be embarrassed again. Amare' may not be capable of feeling embarrassed, but he wants to win and he's just brash enough to do what it takes.

Unfortunately the players on the Blazers that do have some pride and believe they are capable of winning even if they have to win uncomfortably, are not getting the help they need. Andre, Howard, Camby & Bayless need LaMarcus to come out of this self-induced funk and stop allowing himself to be punked by just another blowhard in the mold of glass-jaw Garnett.

I'm satisfied that Martell knows what's up; he's taken his lumps and won't settle for self-indulgent excuses. I'm satisfied that Bayless knows no limit to his pride and Rudy remembered who he is last night.

But if I don't see something more from LaMarcus this next game, then I'm going to have a hard time believing he's even capable of stepping up.

LaMarcus: You earn respect it is never handed to you. No one cares about your sensitivities or your inexplicable predilection towards fade-away jumpers when things aren't easy for you. We want to see some fire, we want to know if you've got pride.

Traditionally speaking, it is safe to say that higher seeded teams are favored and should be favored to win the playoff series they find themselves in against lower seeded teams. This year's playoffs really haven't done anything to contradict that assumption seeing that 7 of the 8 series being played so far have seen the home team win the opening game and have exposed the weaknesses of the lower seeded teams. However, that is not the only assumption the media seems to be working off of in regards to the Phoenix-Portland series.

Quite a few times now I have heard media members and fans parrot the notion that simply because Phoenix had a hot streak in the second half of the season and finished with a better record that it is safe to expect Phoenix to play at that same level against Portland in the post-season and thus the media has overlooked Portland. There are two reasons why that kind of analysis is illogical, if not just plain lazy.

1. Portland's injury-laced team still won 50 games while Phoenix had virtually no major injuries to speak of during the season and only won 4 more. It can be argued that without Roy's hamstring injury, this team would more than likely have taken some of the games they lost in that stretch and could have finished with the same record they ended last season with. Portland without the injuries is a fairytale I know, but it is a fairytale with an ending that makes the seeding argument much less appealing.

2. The famed hot-streak that Phoenix experienced during the regular season did not occur against Portland. Portland won the season series against Phoenix, regardless of the results of the final contest in the regular season, which means that Phoenix' hot-streak is meaningless when evaluating this playoff series. In fact, Phoenix and Portland only played one game during the vaunted hot-streak and even in that game Portland had control until the last half of the fourth quarter when they fell because of poor execution against a defensive scheme - something Portland has since proven they can overcome - not because of any real superiority of Phoenix.

Phoenix was known this season - as they have been in previous seasons during the Steve Nash era - as a running team with an explosive offense. Portland is seen as a team that plays only half-court offense and thus is slow. However, we have very fast players who can get back on defense against a running team and that factor alone changes the expectations of how much Phoenix should be able to run and "explode" offensively. So, what happens when a running offense meets a team that prides themselves on good defense while also matching up well against nearly every facet of that vaunted offensive system? You get the results as shown in game 1 of this series and you get it consistently if the Blazers continue to focus on and execute transition defense.

Thus the media's analytical process is riddled with holes. They haven't paid attention to Portland's remarkable record or how they achieved it. They haven't paid attention to Phoenix' weaknesses but have simply assumed that performances against teams that haven't been capable of slowing them down are indicative of what should happen against Portland, a team that almost swept the Suns during the regular season and additionally, they have looked at Roy's injury as something that would produce a statistical hiccup for Portland, when in fact the team is - due to the numerous injuries - probably more equipped to overcome the absence than any other team in the Playoffs this season, which makes it much less of a problem than the media portrays it to be.

I smell a first round win.

Okay, it has been a long time since I've posted on this site - I believe it was during the playoffs last season, so forgive me if this topic is a total rehash of others. I knew this would be too long to be a comment by itself so I decided to put it up as a post. Also forgive the length! Wow, I had no idea I had this much to say when I started.

As you will have noticed from the title, I'm not too thrilled with Nate McMillan's in-game decisions as of late... Well, I'll be honest: I have to expand that to his general decisions and the direction he seems to be going right now. Read on if you're interersted.

Continue reading this post »

Disclaimer: This is my first posting of any kind, so if I've messed up the formatting or something, please be gentle and point me in the right direction. Thanks!

There are a couple of things that I took away from this game, one of which I am completely annoyed with, and the rest is just some basic obsercations that I just had to work out of my system. We all know there's no better place to do it than here.

First. I 'm not a determinist when it comes to the officiating, I understand that the refs don't actually determine the outcome of the game, as they affect only a percentage of the plays in it, however the argument that the refs can't really sway how a game is played, or how the flow of the game evolves from the opening tip on is weak to me. Within the first few minutes of this game there were several questionable non-calls that affected the Blazer's ability to be productive. Had those calls been made, it would have forced Houston to play less physical and would there would have been parity on how the defenses could be affective on the inside between the teams, however the calls weren't equal because within that same time frame in which Portland didn't get the benefit of the doubt, Houston was getting to the line against our defense and it wasn't because Portland was really doing anything different than Houston was.

With Houston's inability to actually foul the Blazers in the eyes of the refs tonight, it made it nearly impossible to establish an inside game or effectvely get room for the shooters to get their shots going and because of this, the offense and defense deteriorated. The game really wasn't played at all like the Blazers have played for the last month of the season after those first few possessions.

Some will say that it is up to the team to overcome those sorts of obstacles, well I'd just love to ask those people one simple question: How? When a team tries to defend the other as physically as they are  being defended on the other end and it ends up as a foul against one and two freebies for other consistently, what can a team possibly do? The Blazers tried to do the same in return and we see the ref is on the sideline hacking away, just trying to get that whistle back up where it belongs. The results are a non-call foul, no basket and Houston with all the momentum.

The argument I hear is that the more aggressive team gets the calls. Could that be because the refs are only letting one team be aggressive? What can a team do to possibly break that cycle, when "being aggressive" was what they were trying to do in the first place? The Blazers didn't come out onto the floor and start immediately shooting long jumpers and allowing Houston to do whatever they wanted. They were just as aggressive until they got into foul trouble and then couldn't be without the threat of losing key players.

The argument has never made a lick of sense to me whatsoever. A foul is a foul, regardless of who is doing it, regardless of who is being fouled and regardless of the manner in which the play ocurred - or at least that's how it should be. The obviously poor officiating has got to stop. We can only hope that the new crew for the next game - assuming it won't be the same group - will see things differently and allow both teams to play to the same standard.

The rest of my gripes really center around the fact that as the game went on, the team just looked worse and worse. There was virtually no ball movement and no one stayed on their defensive assignment. The Blazers were out rebounded with Yao not playing extended minutes. We looked like a totally different team out there than the one that shut down Denver and handed them a very convincing loss just a few days before.

I know it can't all be blamed on the refs, but I'm willing to bet that the calls and non-calls determined that this game was going to be played however Houston wanted to play it.

What does everyone else think?