studying math is for nerwods, and since i am no nerdwod i am instead watching our beloved stampede take on the hated jam of bakersfield on day 3 of the d league showcase, the most underrated of the american non NBA professional basketball experiences. i invite you to join me in this thread if you also are watching it. there are about 4 minutes left in the first quarter as i write this, bakersfield leads 18-7. no lie, the 11-12 stampede are like my favorite team evar. antione "saturated phat" walker, seth tarver, mikki moore, PLUS two blazers under contract? yes, please. go stampede

ooo, sorry. were you expecting me to provide links? i was hoping you would... thats pretty much it, but i have to type more words and shit. it seems like the mlb network should have more live baseball during the offseason. have the padres ever had this many guys with ml experience on one fall league roster? 75 words is a bit extreme during the offseason isnt it? i hope the diamonbacks lose so that bitch mark grace gets all sad. 

the emeralds are taking on the giants low A affiliate tonight in salem keizer, oregon. probably a long shot, but if theres any GLBers in the portland are you should totes go, so we can see future padres beat the shit out of future giants. my cousin and i will be sitting on the first base side, il be rocking the old style camo jersey with a domestic. i may at some point eat a volcano burger, as they are delicious. come introduce yourelf. go pads, beat the mets.

thursday i got to take in my first eugene emeralds game of the season with. i live in portland, so until this year i had the luxury of seeing the padres AAA affiliate up close and personal nearly as much as i wanted. sadly, our mayor and this guy named merrit paulson are huge chodes, so the storied portland beavers were relocated to tucson, as you probably know. unfortunately this leaves the nearest live baseabll a 25 or 30 minute drive down I5 to salem, which is the host city of the volcanoes, the short season A ball affiliate of the god damned giants of all teams, which means not only do i have to make a near half hour drive but i have to be reminded every second of how fucking great the giants are in order to see a live professional baseaball game.

the game itself was very good from our perspective. the emeralds won 5 to 2, with five different players driving in runs. cory spangenberg and jace peterson both pass the eye test, and both got on base multiple times. spangenberg had a rbi double that accounted for one of just two extra base hits the emeralds had, the other being a leadoff triple from donavan tate, who looks like hes in cruise control all the time to me. matt andriese threw six dominating innings, allowing only one run. he threw hard, breaking several bats. i dont recall one volcanoes player squaring up a ball when he was still on the mound. peterson made a couple of nice stops of ground balls at short, and the finest play of the game was probably a 643 DP in which peterson made a great stop and spangenberg showed off a really strong armon the relay to first, where daniel garce made a great pick to get the runner by an eyelash. there were no errors in the game for either side, something that we will hopefully be able to say more often the about the pads the rest of the year. finally, im hoping somebody can explain to me how of 14 pitchers only one of the emerealds is left handed? how does that happen? thats pretty much all ive got, next time il try and get some pictures up to make my rambling more tollerable. go padres (and ems!)

among other things, those of us blessed enough to be able to be in the RG tonight just cant pass up the chance to make brian cardinal regret the day he cheap shotted patty mills. this man is one of the biggest jokes in the nba. sean marks wouldn't let brian cardinal carry his jock strap. being that he is a scrub whos only purpose is to be a goon, those of you with seats close to the mavericks bench will have to carry most of the weight. remind him what would happen if he ever attempted to do what he did to somebody over 6 feet tall. inquire as to what his salary is. (its a lot). suggest he enter a junior high rec league, where he may be able to carve out some minutes off the bench against players closer to his skill level. ask him what his biggest career accomplishments are. just dont throw a straw wrapper at him.

go blazers. i mess with texas.

I figured a good time to make a fanpost would be in the waining hours before the first lakers game of the year. I'm wondering if you fellow blazer fans can help me out. Like many, I enjoy collecting blazers replica jerseys. Unlike most of you though, I don't go for the big names. In fact I go for the opposite. You won't catch me wearing a drexler throwback, a broy number 7, or even a rasheed wallace. I like my jerseys obscure as possible. I've already amassed an antonio daniels, an ike diogu, a jarrett jack, and an ime udoka among others. If YOU'VE got any replicas youre ashamed to have in your back closet, skip the goodwill, and make sure that theyre taken off your hands by a fellow diehard blazer fan. Im even willing to compensate financially (to laker fans who may be reading- to compensate financially means to give money in exchange for said jerseys). Leave a comment if you're interested. Beat LA.

interesting game tonight. it was fun to the see the non rotation guys get some extended run. with the phoenix series so close (and yet so far away... cant sleep!) you know some minor rotation changes could be made to account for brandons probable absence, plus the fact that coaches typically tighten their playoff rotations up anyway. so my question to you guys is this. is there anybody whos not getting minutes who you wouldnt mind seeing get 5 to 8 minutes or so? i know there isnt a worse inerior defense in the league than what the warriors had tonight, but dante and jp both looked like studs tonight. how about the opposite, anybody whos getting minutes that shouldnt? certainly its a difficult case to make, but one could argue bayless doesent need to be out there as much as he has been since the blake trade. (side note, i was at the game monday night and was shocked at how much further along eric maynor seemed compared to jaybay.) beat phoenix. 

im glad the blazers seem to be trying to bring another guy on board for the stretch run as we try to get back to the playoffs. ive read a lot of names, mostly guys whove seen some fairly significant time in the league. ive read the names kenny thomas, jake voshkul, zdrunus ilgauskus (not gonna happen), jaque vaugh, and dan dickau, and apparently theyve got more names on their board than that. personally i would like to see the spot go to kenny thomas because he could provide a lot of the same things as juwan. not as many buckets or minutes as juwan, but he can defend 4's and 5's, has a good reach, hes still very physical, and hes a decent defender and rebounder. oh yeah, and hes got some decent playoff experience as well. between he and howard the two could give the blazers a pretty formidable second front line. who do you guys like though? any names youve heard that i havent?

i got the idea for this post from another sbnation website (gaslampball.com go padres!). given the team's recent history i thought it would make a good post for the blazers. so without further ado, here is my lineup of the least enjoyed blazers of all time, by position.

PG- dan dickau. im sure dans a great guy and all, but whenever he was on the court it seemed like everyone thought he was disabled or something so they couldnt say anything bad about him. it was like just because he was from battle ground he was portland's favorite son.

SG- derek anderson. wouldve been bonzi wells but that was cool that he apologized to blazer fans. but BOY did i hates me some derek anderson. his lack of physical toughness remains one of the most remarkable things i have ever seen. i have never been so convinced that someone just. didnt. care. didnt he miss like 37 games with a toothache or something like that?

SF- scottie pippen. might suprise you, but the guy is a world class chode. remember when he refused to take the court after a timeout because phil jackson drew up the last shot for somebody else? or that time he fought with a fan during the dallas series? or that it took him half a season to get the entire city of houston to hate his guts? the guy got more of an ego from being a sidekick than anyone ever should. he almost killed a friend of my dads with a bad golf shot too.

PF- darius miles. i suppose hes playing out of postion at the 4, but what least favorite blazers list would be complete without him?

C- ha seung jin. simply because whenever i saw him miss a dunk or fail to display even the most fundamental understanding of the game of basketball it was a sobering reminder that the city of portland had become home to the worst franchise in the nba.

6th man- shawn kemp. watching the guy that used to be shawn kemp waddle up and down the rose garden was truly depressing. the poster child of how NOT to handle fame for the nba. an epic waste of talent.

im sure ive forgotten some obvious names. lets see your lineup in the comments.

so i have two trade ideas for the blazers. the first one is pretty straight forward, and i think very plausible. basically, the blazers send steve blake and travis outlaw to the wizards for brendan haywood. to me this is a win win. the wizards are 23 million over the cap, so to trade one expiring contract into two when theyre already out of the playoff race anyway makes sense to them. for the blazers it would be huge for them to get a legit 7 foot, 270 pound TRUE center whos been around 8 years and would provide exactly what the blazers are lacking right now on the interior. there probably isnt a spot for him past this year, (unless oden and joel arent ready by next years training camp)  but hes an unrestricted free agent this summer anyway, so he doesnet really need one. it would be sad to see steve and travis go, theyve been here longer than most, but i think this would make them a better basketball team over the final 30 or so games this year. heres the espn trade machine link. http://games.espn.go.com/nba/tradeMachine. tell me what yall think. il have a part 2 later that'll require a little bit more imagination.

so my friends and i were discussing tony luftman and how terrible he is, and decided to find out if he got another job. to my suprise, i stumbled on this link. http://www.basketballforum.com/portland-trail-blazers/392995-so-what-did-happen-tony-luftman.html. please tell me hes not coming back after the AS break. watching him try to be a halftime studio host is like watching chris kaman try to make a layup.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdwHIQKGsPc. or laz d rap. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjangHVkuPk. does anyone know if this is true?

With the preseason just around the corner and position debates all the rage right now, (starting pg, sf, center...) I thought I'd throw another debate out there, one that should definitly start to pick up once the team starts playing games. Who do you think should get the the fifteenth spot on the roster? With the Juwan Howard signing (which I liked) that leaves the blazers with one spot left and four guys competing for it. The two leading candidates seem to be Jarron Collins, a former Jazz center, and Ime Udoka, who started 81 games during the 06-7 season here in portland after playing hs ball at jefferson and his college ball at PSU. The other two guys are Donnell Taylor, who has 98 games of NBA experience over two years but has played in greece the past two years, and Quinton Hosley, a 6'7'' tweener who plays a bulky three and an undersized power forward. Here are each of the player's basketballreference.com links. Taylor: http://basketballreference.com/players/playerpage.htm?ilkid=TAYLODO01, Hosley: (his Euroleague player profile as well as his wikipedia, because he hasn't logged any time in the NBA) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quinton_Hosley,  http://www.euroleague.net/competition/players/showplayer?clubcode=mad&pcode=001196&seasoncode=e2008, Udoka: http://basketballreference.com/players/playerpage.htm?ilkid=UDOKAIM01%20, Collins: http://basketballreference.com/players/playerpage.htm?ilkid=COLLIJA04. This truthfully a two man race unless Taylor or Hosley absoluteley tears it up in camp, (and even then they would probably just be used as trade bait) between Udoka and Collins. They both certainly have something to bring to the table. Both are veterans, provide physical play, and have some playoff experience. If it were up to me, I'd go with Collins, because to me there just isn't enough use for another small forward, plus Udoka's numbers with San Antonio last year took a steep decline, so it looks like his best days may be behind him. Collins is a year younger, and could provide depth at both the center and power foward spots, and you can never have too much size at the end of your bench.
Its up to you though, so who gets it?

this seems like way to much to type about this subject. i want the season to start.