Well, as we wrap up the 08-09 season I want to thank everyone for their kind words regarding my recent fanpost contributions. This is a killer community and it's a lot of fun contributing thoughts and getting thoughtful, reasoned feedback.

As mentioned in a previous edition, the BE staff does such a solid job of talking Blazers personnel and issues that I often find it a better contribution to put up some observations about the other guys. So some thoughts on the game and on the Clipper franchise, but first, an unusual note from the fourth quarter of Saturday's win:

Maybe I'm way off-base on this one, but this was too...just cool not to share. Fourth quarter. Clippers up two. Nate calls time and, I'm sure, reminds the team that this is still their game to lose and that now would probably be a good time to pull out the stops and put the clamps down. The Blazers respond with that nice 14-0 run, anchored by some clutch treys from Rudy and some solid, unselfish play from LaMarcus. A timeout is called. While 2 or 3 minutes remain, the Blazers have essentially selected the best nails for the job and have said a few words on the coffin's behalf. Barring a serious turnaround from the Clippers, the game is largely decided.

 

As the Blazers head for the bench, LaMarcus sidles over to Joel, makes some quiet comment with a smile. Joel responds with something that gets a good chuckle from L.A. As they make their way to the huddle, Joel pats L.A. on the back...and then puts his big old hand on the back of LaMarcus' head. Not the back of his neck, really, more like the base of his skull, right? As they walk back, he keeps it there for maybe three seconds as they head over to rejoin their teammates. LaMarcus takes no notice. A moment late, Joel's hand drops; the camera moves on.

 

Ask yourself how you'd react if someone came up to you at the office, put a hand right on the back of your head, maybe gave a comforting squeeze, and congratulated you on that nice account summary you put together for Ted. Or thanked you for cleaning out the fat fryer last night instead of leaving it for the morning crew. Not a pat, not a dap. Not a reassuring clap on the shoulder. Your. head. What would you do? Not to paint myself as a social leper, but depending on who it was, I'd be confused at best and threatening to call HR at worst.

 

The back of the head's an intimate spot. (Not intimate like that, you pervs.) I'm saying it's in our personal space. That's restricted airspace, off-limits to the general public. Family, spouse, kids only. Again, that's just me, of course, but I'm willing to bet most folks feel somewhat the same.

 

My point with all this is this little mini-moment between Joel and L.A. was a little reminder of just how closely knit this team really is. We see em smiling, we hear the good press, but it's little things like that which tell the story. Even more telling: LaMarcus's complete indifference. It's the way you'd react if it was your brother, or your dad. I get that they're athletes, but this wasn't a slap on the rear or a spirited chest-bump.

 

You can watch some NBA players go an entire career without showing that kind of bond with a teammate, or allowing a teammate to get that close. I saw that and thought, These guys really are a family. Doesn't matter whether we take note or not. And as a fan, you look back to those teams just a few short seasons ago, and that brief, nonchalant display of closeness would never have taken place. No way. The Blazers have been through a lot this year. Let's hope there's more to come. But win or lose this postseason, this group will go down fighting as one.

Okay, okay, cue some AC/DC or something. And do something about the frickin patchouli stinking up the place. Some random Clippers observations:

• What the hell is a Clipper anyway. Yeah, yeah, wikipedia is my friend: "A clipper was a very fast sailing ship of the 19th century that had multiple masts and a square rig." Sexy. On the one hand, I wonder if maybe at least some very small part of this franchise's issues is that they're fundamentally hard to identify with. Seriously. On the other hand, I don't particularly identify with boys' or mens' baggy trousers either, but never mind.

• Poor Eric Gordon. You talk about a guy selling out for his team. That dunk on Rudy in the fourth, siiick. All you need to know about the depth and talent of this year's rookie class: Eric Gordon scores more per game than Steve Nash, gets to the line more per game than Rudy Gay, shoots the three better than Peja, and picks more pockets per game than Rudy Fernandez, yet he's barely a footnote in the Rookie of the Year conversation. He's sure gonna look good in somebody else's uniform in a couple of years.

• I think Baron Davis has been an embarrassment this year. I understand he thought he'd have Elton Brand around, I understand he got burned, I understand he now plays on a bad team and that can't be fun. But you look at the way his stats have dropped across the board this season and it's just disappointing, especially after he made us all fans when he threw it down on Kirilenko back in 2007. What's frustrating is you saw a little bit of that fire last night, some passion. I've seen a couple of Clippers games this season and he's just not into it. If you give this Bill Simmons column a read, you'll understand some of why this is such a tough team to sell out for. But that's not much of an excuse. He's making sick money to lead these guys. Anybody can get excited when you're all tied with under five to go. You're paid superstar bucks to lead by example and that's exactly what he hasn't been doing for much of this season.

• Much has been made of the percentage of Blazer fans at Staples Center. I was less startled by that then by the serious lack of Clippers fans. I know that sounds stupidly self-evident; I'm referring to the cavernous silence that greeted the L.A. players after a bad call or a hard foul. I saw a couple calls that went Portland's way (amazingly, when we decided to assert ourselves in the paint, I know, go figure), and lemme tell you, you don't even think to acknowledge that grumble of disapproval until you realize with surprise that it just ain't there. No chorus of boos upon the replay. Either that was the best officiated game in the history of the league, or those were some well-mannered fans, or that's a fanbase who decided to stay home and play Halo or something.

• Zach Randolph has exactly the same game he has when he left Portland what seems like half a decade ago. Same strengths, same weaknesses. I'm not going to take any shots other than to observe that you'd expect a PF in his late twenties to be adding something to his game. Evidently low-post defense and shot selection have not ascended on the list of priorities. Three-point attempts per game, however, have clearly become the flavor of the day.

• The tough thing about the Clips is that some pieces are there, man. Honestly I've always been a little bit of a Brian Skinner homer. NBA body, works pretty hard, active on the boards. He's one of the guys who I hope gets a shot to crack the rotation on a playoff team. And Chris Kaman? I don't care that he's got that weirdness going on with his hair, and I don't care that his name kinda rhymes with Caveman lololol because he looks like a big dumb caveman roflmao. He's friggin huge, and he boxes out without even trying, and don't look now but he has a better offensive game than Greg Oden. He also shoots 71% from the line and averages nearly a double-double in under 30 minutes. I think anyone who thinks the Clippers overpaid for Kaman is on crack. Go ask half the league if they'd pay $10M a year for that kind of consistent productivity from a 7'3" center. We're just spoiled up here because we have Joel right now.

• I don't know if that was really Tina Fey but I'm choosing to tell myself that it was, and she's a rabid Rip City believer, and she's going to be at the next Blazer's Edge party.

• In defense of Baron Davis, I'll refer to an L.A. Times piece on the close to the long Clippers season:

Dunleavy spoke about what the team wants out of Davis, and pointed to Friday night's win against Sacramento as example No. 1.

"I think when he has spurts when he's in attack mode and he's trying to get to the rim, like in our game last night, that's exactly what he should do," he said.

• Really? Gosh, Mike, I'm sorry. I didn't realize that this whole time you've wanted to Baron to freewheel into the paint and drive the lane and push the tempo in attack mode. That must be why you've chosen to pair one of the great uptempo guards in the game today with a frontcourt of some of the slowest, most downtempo PFs and Cs in the game today. It's okay, though: Randolph and Kaman are only under contract for two more seasons. I'm sure the youth movement will jump at the chance to hang around, reup into lengthy multi-year contracts,  and jumpstart the next Clippers revolution under "Coach" Dunleavy's guiding hand. What's frustrating here, by the way, is that after years, decades of well-documented frugality, we've finally seen Clippers owner Donald Sterling shell out some cash the last couple of seasons, and since Dunleavy's the one telling him where to write the checks, we see it spent on the absolute wrong set of players.

• I didn't realize that Al Thornton had been shelved for the season. Bummer. There's another guy who absolutely belongs in the league and who I'd pay to see play. I don't think the Clippers have necessarily drafted worse than other teams at all. Fact is, they've made some very solid picks in recent years. Their share of busts, of course, but hell, when you're in the lottery every year, there's this thing called the law of averages. 

Ehh, that's all I've got. Let's finish the season strong with a couple of Ws!

Everyone seemed to like the Grizzlies piece I did a few days ago, so I thought a Jazz piece was appropriate. Dave and Ben do a better job than I could ever dream of in covering the Blazers' performance, but I think there's always stuff to talk about with regards to the opposition. Time will of course tell whether the titles get any better; evidently we have nowhere to go but up.

Post-game thoughts, in no particular order:

• Look, the Blazers played a terrific game. They had a game plan, they stuck to it, they executed really well and consistently made the extra pass. That said, i was stunned at Utah's overall effort and aggressiveness, or should I say, the complete and utter lack thereof. For much of this game it looked like we were playing the Raptors. Carlos Boozer with no free throw attempts in 24 minutes? And don't tell me he wasn't getting the calls. Look at the shot chart. Boozer was 1-for-1 in the paint. If the Jazz were going to win this game on the road, with tired legs, it was not going to be racing Outlaw and Batum up and down the hardwood. It was going to be letting Boozer and Paul Millsap bang around in the lane, create some contact, and put the onus on the referees to make the calls. Not only did they not get the calls, they didn't even try. You saw them get a little whiny as the Blazers pulled away, and I was just disgusted. This is not the Jazz team I know and despise! You don't get to whine if you're not getting hit! Period! Even when they did take it to the rack, it wasn't assertive, and the officiating crew was not impressed.

• In the same sense, I don't want to take anything away from the Blazers or coach McMillan, but Jerry Sloan has been coaching a long time. Think the Blazers caught him with his pants down, do ya? Yeah, I'm sure he didn't see physical play from LaMarcus and repeated attempts to find the open three-point shooter coming, no way. Bet he didn't anticipate clogging the lane to force Boozer outside, either. And the boisterous crowd, I'm sure that caught him with his pants down. Gimme a break. Sloan has seen every game plan under the sun, and he knew exactly what to expect tonight, and it's a pretty safe bet that he prepped his team as well as any coach could. They just didn't have the energy and clearly did not have the drive. If I'm him, I can forgive the one but not the other. That's why the way the Jazz lost is a bit of a head-scratcher for me. They knew this game was important. I think they were just out of gas, and the Blazers were rested, and they got in a hole early, and welp, sometimes that's a recipe for an L and ain't nothing a coach can do about it.. Ultimately all he could do was get thrown out in a desperate attempt to inject some fire into his squad.

• I'm not a fan of this Jazz team and I haven't been all season. It's nothing against the players per se. I just don't think they're constructed to win a ring. I don't like the bench, I think Paul Millsap is a nice player who's a little overrated, I think Kyle Korver is a colossal liability on defense, and I think whoever thought it was a good idea to give Andrei Kirilenko a Yao Ming-level contract should be sat on repeatedly by Mehmet Okur until they sobbingly agree to repent. Their game plan is pretty straightforward, honestly (as alluded to above): push you around and force the refs to call something, force you to adjust as the game progresses, win the free-throw battle and rely on Deron Williams to bring you home. There's nothing wrong with that. Hell, that's how I'd do it. But it explains why they're atrocious on the road against decent teams. And it also explains why they lost this game. When they didn't get any early calls, instead of sticking to the plan they resorted to outside jumpers, Williams couldn't get anything to fall, and things went downhill from there. Just understand that I don't see the Jazz's confidence dented by this one at all. Their gameplan works pretty well at home, obviously. And Williams won't go 4-for-13 every night. Of course, it's not fair to gloss over Portland's defense. I didn't see a single uncontested shot until it was too late to matter.

• While I'm bagging on the Jazz bench, I should point out that I think the supporting cast clearly cost Utah the game. Too much standing around waiting for Deron Williams to do something. That's the problem with a guy like Okur who doesn't make his home in the paint. When your outside shot isn't falling, what do you do? Bang around inside, look for easy buckets in the paint, maybe a putback or something off the offensive glass. Too bad Okur ranks 41st in the league on offensive boards per game. I hate it when Jazz fans compare Okur to Sabonis just because they're both 7-foot Euros who can hit an outside shot. Until your guy can create his own shot in the paint, or pass out of a double-team with an assist-to-turnover ratio of greater than 1:1, that's the end of that conversation. At any rate, if Brandon's not hitting from the outside, and LaMarcus is being tentative, what do the Blazers do? Try to get Outlaw going, for starters. Look for some energy plays from Fernandez, that sort of thing. Tonight, with Williams and Okur both cold, it seemed like the Jazz decided to just stand around and wait for one of them to show up. I'm exempting Boozer from this part because he basically did everything he could in limited playing time, yet this was a fifteen-point-game before the ejection. We keep hearing you're underrated, Ronnie Brewer. Now would have been a nice time to prove it. At least Kirilenko got into the paint and tried to make some things happen. I bet he and WIlliams are the only ones who don't feel the wrath of Sloan tonight.

And in closing, because you frankly can never see this picture enough, my overall assessment of the Jazz's defensive mindset this evening:

via img7.imageshack.us

Thanks for reading. Go Blazers!

Having just returned home from the Saturday night matchup against the Grizzlies, some thoughts on the opposing team in no particular order. I've got plenty of Blazers observations, but as the staff and regular contributors handle those so well on a daily basis, I thought it'd be a little more interesting to write about the other guys for a change, for whatever that's worth.

• I get that Kevin McHale needed a low-post presence and recognized that Kevin Love could be a valuable cog on a rebuilding team. I get that swapping picks with Memphis was not a disaster. And I also get that on a team where you're desperately trying to mold lottery pick Randy Foye into something other than a role player, where you're trying to do something meaningful with Rashad McCants's career, when you're praying that Sebastian Telfair can produce worthwhile minutes, the last thing you need is a streaky guard with a chip on his shoulder. I really do get all that. I think the flak McHale might have caught from T-Wolves fans for taking a flyer on O.J. Mayo made the Love acquisition the only realistic choice. But with all that said, he should have found a way to get Mayo. You can trade for 6'10" rebounders with a good grasp of team defense and keying the fast break. Go trade for Troy Murphy. Swing some deal for Brandon Bass or something, he's a restricted free agent this summer. But when you get a shot at a player like O.J. Mayo, you don't get cute. I know hindsight is 20/20, but watching Mayo coolly drain those tough jumpers, seeing him fight through the picks and play what I thought was pretty solid defense end-to-end...whoops. Yet another bad call by Minnesota.

• I'll make a prediction: I predict that Hakim Warrick will make a little bit of a mark on the NBA before all is said and done. Looking at him play, it became clear that he's not being utilized as well as he might be on a better team. His offensive skills are undeniable, but he's a tweener PF without the size to defend at the 4 and lacking the speed to be a stopper at the 3. So he comes off the bench and averages less than 25 minutes a game, because he's a modest liability on the defensive end who becomes a huge liability since the Grizzlies have nobody at the 5 to cover up his shortcomings. This may sound familiar to anybody who's ever seen Joel Przybilla rotate with a scowl to cover Zach Randolph's man. So he languishes on this Memphis team, but the guy's only 27, he can shoot, he can rebound and he's still got hops. I think there are a good half-dozen teams who would take him on in a heartbeat, knowing the team D is good enough to get by with playing him at PF. Some tough long jumpers for a 6'9" guy. I could see him being a real asset for the Spurs, or the Rockets. Get out of Memphis, Hakim. Get out before it's too late.

• On that note, I don't know what the hell with the Grizzlies. A lineup of Mike Conley, Mayo, Rudy Gay, Warrick, and Marc Gasol has offense to spare. They could use a little more juice off the bench (read: any), and defense will only come with experience for this young unit, but you'd think a starting lineup like that wouldn't be getting embarrassed on a nightly basis like they are. Yet Memphis ranks at or near the bottom of the league in virtually every category that matters. What do you fix? Where do you start? Gotta do something now before a guy like Gay gets frustrated and hits the road. The Grizzlies are trying to build through the draft and via trades. Well, they've got plenty of talent., and they're nice and young, and there you go. Except I don't see any of the progress you see with a team like Oklahoma City, for example, though Memphis hasn't drafted particularly poorly. I don't know what the next step is for them, where they go as a franchise, but they are a long ways off from being relevant.

• Boy, you watch the way Marc Gasol handles himself in the paint, and suddenly that Lakers trade that sent Pau Gasol out the door looks...well, it still looks horrible. But maybe not quite as horrible, if you're Michael Heisley trying to save money any way you can. Does anybody see this team being all that much better with Pau Gasol instead of Marc? It's not like Pau gave 'em all this toughness and defense to build around. Marc Gasol looks like he can be every bit as effective a weapon as his brother down the road. Time will tell, but I think if you give Marc Gasol a couple more years of NBA play and give him a couple of perimeter guys like Gay and Mayo to open things up down low for him to operate, you're headed in the right direction. On that end of the court, anyway. How you stop anybody on the other end, I can't help you there.
  

• It's easy to see why some teams were ga-ga over Darko Milicic. He's got great size and a soft touch around the rim. But watching him play tonight, I saw a guy with little basketball IQ and virtually no nose for the ball. Tough to gauge those attributes in a player before they enter the league, and even tougher to do it when they're playing in Europe, but I tried to keep track of him every minute he was on the floor tonight, and in his rotations, in his picks, in nearly every aspect of the game...he just doesn't seem like he's ever going to be the impact player you'd expect when you pick second in the draft lottery. To say nothing of the dude's uncanny resemblance to Morrissey. I didn't spend much time finding pictures that matched well, but look at this:

via img8.imageshack.us

Not the best pics to illustrate my point, perhaps. But I'm telling you, the similarities are there. It's in the chin, man. The chin and the modest flounce n pout after a bad call. Those haunted eyes. Perhaps if they would snap a few quick shots of Darko prancing across the stage, or of Morrissey getting boxed out on the block. Until then, we can only dream...and wonder.