So this loss wasn't fun, in fact it was downright one of the, nay, the most painful day of the year for me. Lets get that out of the way, this was just an embarassment from start to finish.

BUT there is good news, losing this game wasn't the death of the Blazers chances.

On the ESPN broadcast they were talking about how if a team wins game 1 they have a 79% chance of winning the series, this is true.

BUT what that doesn't show is actually how that really breaks down. When the Home team wins game 1 they actually have a 91.7% chance of winning the series, THAT IS HUGE. But that is an awfully large number, when we look at what happens when the visitor wins game 1, we find out that the home team still wins 41.7% of the time.

From a statistical standpoint, this game was MUCH more important to the Rockets than the Blazers. Now these numbers are just from the first round of the NBA playoffs, if we expand our sample size of teams winning/losing game 1 in the playoffs we see that if the home team loses game 1, they still win 56.7% of the time, that's more than half the time that the home team loses game 1 they still win the series.

Was this fun: No. Was this encouraging: No. Did the Blazers look like the could even win 1 game this series: No.

But did losing this game cost us the series: NOT AT ALL.

This team has shown maturity beyond their years all season, lets hope they take some lessons from this loss, let it humble them significantly and put a fire in them to prove all the doubters who are bound to come out of the woodwork in the next 3 days, and come out ready to play game 2.

Also forgot to add: my stats came from - http://www.whowins.com/tables/up10.html

So in several fanpots written here,,Jason Quick's latest article, to even Nate's postgame comments I have seen the game last night described as the Blazers opportunity to be "co-champions" of the Northwest Division.

Obviously Denver wins the tiebreaker for seeding purposes, hence their 2 seed while we get the 4 seed, but is that merely a "seeding" tie breaker and does the NBA really hand out co-division championships?

I know it's mostly meaningless, but can/will the Blazers hang a division banner for this year? Or are the Nuggets the actual "division" champs and this is just rhetoric by fans, media, and coaches to acknowledge that the Blazers and Nuggets were "effectively" tied?

Just wondering, because I had assumed that because of the "seeding" tie breakers giving Denver the 2 seed that meant that Portland could not be co-champions of the division but I don't know.

Probably meaningless, just didn't know where to get the answer, and it has been odd to see the Blazers referenced as co-division champs all over the place when I didn't even know that was possible (and am still not sure it is).

So I know it is a bit early for the scoreboard watch, but I just ran across something that sort of blew me away.

In Jscot's and others predictions threads they all have SA winning in Indiana tonight, and I never once thought otherwise, assuming that SA wouldn't have much trouble dispatching the Pacers.

Then I logged on to ESPN.com and went to go fill out my streak for the cash, and saw that that was one of the games we were allowed to pick on, and I quickly selected SA. But I got to thinking that on Streak for the cash they tend to give you odds that are as close to 50/50 as possible, and I wondered if I had missed some key injury or something.

So I headed over to accuscore and checked out the game, and sure enough Indiana has a 48% chance of winning, to SA's 52%. That seems like pretty good odds for an "upset" that would help Blazer fans. I decided to check the odds on the rest of the games that could help the Blazers and here is todays breakdown:

Best Odds for helping the Blazers

Indiana 48% vs San Antonio
Golden State 46% vs New Orleans
Memphis 25% vs Dallas
Minnesota 11% vs Utah
Sacremento 11% vs Phoenix (but I am not sure we really care about Phoenix anymore)

LA is 71% over Houston, but that is an "expected" loss for the Rockets (but still a game to watch)

So there are the key games to keep an eye on during Blazer timeouts and pre/post game. Indiana is probably the best chance for an "upset" today for Blazer fans, and I suppose we should be rooting for L.A.... but I just feel dirty doing that so I will ignore that whole situation.

I know it's stupid, I know it's the internet, and I know it means absolutely ZERO in the grand scheme of things, but I still care for some unkown reason!

Over on the Ball Don't Lie blog on Yahoo they are running a hypothetical 2 on 2 tournament, taking the 2 best players from every team and running a 32 team bracket. Roy and Aldridge breezed through the first round killing the Grizzlies, but in the 2nd round they are up against a tough matchup in CP3 and David West.

I just figured mobilizing the BE readership for something as vital as winning internet polls needed to be done, so yeah.

Link here: http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/blog/ball_dont_lie/post/BDL-s-2-on-2-All-Star-Tournament-Hornets-vs-Bl?urn=nba,140922

Go vote for Roy and LMA, because Blazer Fan Internet Rabidity needs to be pushed to new heiights.

I really think some sort of statistical model based around BFIR should be written up, taking in to account quality of content, size of readership/viewership and strength of community. I am 99.9% sure that the Blazers would rank #1 on any BFIR list, with maybe Toronto and those TBJ guys coming in 2nd? Someone much smarter than me should develop this system, and then sell it to ESPN ala Hollinger :P

So in his latest edition of his podcast "The BS Report" Simmons and his buddy Joe House do their annual talk ranking the top 40 tradeable (or least tradeable, depending on your take) players in the NBA.

The good: He ranked Roy at 10th, and argued that other than a Kobe/LeBron/Wade type deal the Blazers might not even trade him for anyone in that 5-10 range... pretty high praise. Obviously Roy's rookie contract is a big plus, but he continues to worry about injuries. I don't get the injury worries, Roy doesn't miss any more time than any other star player but whatever, I'm not worried.

He also ranked LMA in the top 40, he was in the high 30's. Sounds about right to me (honestly  maybe even a little high of a ranking for LMA, I mean I like the guy but there are a lot of PF's I would quickly swap LMA for).

The Bad: They talk about Oden. First of all Simmons had him ranked at 25, while his buddy House had Oden not even ranked! Simmons argument is that Oden is ranked 25 because the Blazers wouldn't trade him for anyone other than the 25 players below him, but that it has a caveat that ONLY the Blazers value him this highly, that every other team in the league has no interest in Oden. I find this completely mind boggling, and that a ton of other teams would quickly trade for Oden's talent.

But I got to thinking about it, is it just us in Portland that have unrealistic expectations for Oden and that indeed we may have made a mistake in picking Oden over Durant? I am okay with that even, as long as Oden turns out to be a quality big man in the post, but Simmons and House take is that Oden is a complete bust and will be a marginal starter at best.

Do we as Blazer fans over value Oden? I for one keep preaching patience, that he is a rookie, coming back from a major knee surgery, and is still extremely young. I have a friend that is a huge L@ker fan (I know, how can I even be friends with him?!?!) and he goes on and on and on about Bynum and how he is sooo much better than Oden. I defend Oden all the time, pointing to Bynum's 4 years in the league vs Oden's 6 months.

So I guess the question I have is, if you can take off your Blazer glasses for a second and try and be as objective as possible, is Oden producing like we expect a #1 pick to? Is he still on track to be a dominate post player for years to come? What is his ceiling/projection at this point? Servicable starter? 1-2 All star appearances? League MVP/Hall of Fame calibur player? What is your take?

So I love how for the entire first half of the season us Blazer fans have had to hear about how Greg Oden was Sam Bowie 2 and that he was this big injury risk and a huge bust.

Yet Andrew Bynum was heralded by Laker fans as the next great center to play in the west and that he would be dominating for years, despite the fact that what was originally supposed to be a 4-6 week injury last year ended up keeping Bynum out for the rest of the year.

Now tonight Bynum gets hit by Kobe in the OTHER knee, is seen laying on the ground literally shrieking in pain and is helped off of the court.

Meanwhile Greg has played in every game since he returned, and while he definitely has a ways to go physically to be all the way back, I think we can all agree that how Greg looks right now is night and day to how he looked at the start of the season.

I hope Greg finally has shrugged off the "injury bust" label (although it takes more than one full year for that to be the case) and that everyone in the national media finally realizes that when you are 7 feet tall your knees and legs just are that much more susceptable than the average joe.

While I don't hope for a long term injury to Bynum (who am I kidding, he is a Laker, it's hard for me to feel THAT sorry for him) I would much rather have Greg, a rookie who is still learning but has shown to be fairly healthy once he got on to the court vs a guy who looks like he is going to have to have a second major surgery on his knees... that would make me uncomfortable.

Edit to add: I am in no way advocating gloating or celebrating Bynum's injury, but instead pointing out how the attitude in coverage in Bynum vs Oden and their respective injuries has been completely unfair.

Edit 2: Update - Bynum now officially out 8-12 weeks. If I had to guess we won't see him on an NBA court until next year, he was notoriously slow at recovering from a knee injury last year, I doubt he will magically recover quicker this time.