Portland Trail Bloggers

So it has been awhile since I’ve written anything for PTB and while I doubt anyone has noticed, I do apologize. To make up for my lack of presence these past few weeks, please humor me by reading my quickly and poorly written post which probably contains stories and ideas that have probably already been written about by far better writers. Enjoy.

Need for a Solid Road Win
I’ve been saying this for awhile but just haven’t managed it to put it to paper. If the Blazers want to be considered one of the elite teams (which they were for about a week) they need to put together a solid road win. You’ll say “But Jeff, they beat Detroit, Orlando and Toronto on the road!” That’s fine and dandy, but those 3 teams are not among the elite in the league. Detroit still has a chance to be if they can get their act together (that AI experiment is not working… at all.) Despite Orlando’s record, I’ll take Detroit, Boston and Cleveland over them any day.

Anyways, I’m not talking about the “good” teams in the league. We can beat the good teams away because we ourselves are a “good” team. I’m talking about a win in a city where it’ll really prove that Portland really has something here. I’m talking about a win Salt Lake City, LA, San Antonio, Phoenix, New Orleans, Cleveland, Boston and maybe even Denver. We already lost in Boston and LA once, twice in Phoenix, twice in Salt Lake and once in New Orleans. That’s not a very good start. However, we still have a chance to maybe steal one away in Denver next week and maybe even San Antonio later on. But I’ll tell you right now that we can already chalk up losses when we go to LA again and when we go to Cleveland for the first and last time. That pretty much leaves us Denver and New Orleans to get what I’m calling a “quality” road win. Not a lot of chances left there.

#4 in the Power Rankings? REALLY?
I don’t mean to sound like a hater, but we were ranked 4th in the entire NBA by ESPN for two weeks in a row  in weeks 5 and 6. REALLY? We were the FOURTH best team in the league for two weeks in a row. We were better than Dallas, Phoenix, Utah, New Orleans, Denver, and San Antonio? REALLY?  I suppose if you consider the Power Rankings to only really be a weekly indicator of which teams are hot and which teams are not for that week (which they’re not) sure, Blazers can be fourth in the league. But at no point in time were we ever the 4th best team in the league. Never. Not once. Not ever. Despite our #4 ranking, all those teams I listed above were and are still better than us.  We should have never been mentioned among the likes of the Lakers, Celtics or Cavs. Even being mentioned in the top 5 in the Power Rankings means you are among the elite in the league, and we are just not that. I’m sorry we’re not. You can argue and argue that we’re an elite team, but come talk to me when we barely make (or barely miss) the playoffs. We can talk about how elite the Blazers are in the 8th or 9th spot in the West.

Fair Weather Fans
Of course with the recent 0-3 skid the Blazers suffered through this past week, its no wonder that every single Blazer site is blowing up with impatient, close and narrow-minded comments from fans demanding the firing of Nate McMillan and the trading of every single Blazer sans Brandon Roy. Listen guys. Teams go on skids. Maybe if you’re among the elite in the league (and we’re not) you don’t go on skids, but we do. This has just been a rough patch. We’ll get over it. The dismantling of the Kings tonight was a good way to calm the fans down a bit, but it still amazes me at how quick public opinion can change. Just 2 weeks ago, when we were somehow 4th in the ESPN Power Rankings, every Blazer fan was tooting their horn and simply amazed by how good our young team had been playing. Fast forward 2 weeks, add in a few tablespoons of reality and suddenly the city is erupting. Brimstone and hellfire. People. Please calm down. The Blazers will get back on their feet. We don’t need to fire Nate and we don’t need to trade everyone away…which brings me to my next point:

Trades
A trade is inevitable. It just is. KP may have said that trades are not on his mind right now, but remember that this is the mean who made “Pritch-slapped” a common verb around the league due to his wheelings-and-dealings. There’s going to be a trade whether KP says there will be or not. To me, there’s really one position the Blazers have to tend to, and that’s the very overcrowded 3 spot. You can’t trade Martell because well, he just signed a 5-year $25 million extension and at that price, he’s an absolute steal starting or coming off the bench. Then you have Nicolas Batum who currently starts over Travis Outlaw as a rookie and whom everyone in Portland has fallen in love with. I think the Blazers like his energy and potential too much to trade him away. That leaves Travis Outlaw the odd man out.

If you’ve read any of my articles about Travis Outlaw, they’re basically about me hating him and wanting him out of Portland and what you’re about to read is no different. Look, Travis is capable of doing really great things for us on the court. He’ll drain the open 3, make that ridiculously difficult jumpshot he seems to love and jam it home for the easy dunk. The thing is, he has no fundamentals. He looks like a puppy still trying to figure out how to use his body correctly. The kid can’t dribble but still tries to create his own shot (which he can’t…and that little two-dribble jumpshot he does DOES NOT COUNT) and just plain looks awkward while on the court. I’m saying trade him while his stock is high. He will only get marginally better than he is now at this point in his career. Call me crazy or call me an idiot but the Travis Outlaw we have here at age 24 is going to be the same Travis Outlaw at ages 25, 26, 27 and 28.

I don’t know who or what to trade for. I just feel that he needs to go. I marginally like him when he does something well but I absolutely loathe him when he does something poorly…which in my eyes is a lot of the time.

We’re not quite consistent with posting stuff on gamedays and don’t expect us to be. But today, we’re on top of things. Look below for the various links about tonight’s game we think you should read:

Blaze of Love’s kellex has 15 thoughts on tonight’s game. Somehow Polygamy scored as many points as Oden’s injury. Don’t ask me.

Blazersedge’s Dave has a nice preview of Game 4 and points out that the battle of power forward in both starting and backup positions will have a significant role in tonight’s game. Read it here.

Oregon Live has their gameday links feature as usual. Look here for everything else you should read before the game.

I’ve been saying this since the opener, someone on the Blazers will win Rookie of the Year Honors. I don’t know who it is, I don’t know if Oden will fulfill his prophecy, if Bayless will break out of his shell, the micro-chance the Batum-Raider has to win it or if Rudy will come out on top as a Dark Horse but I just know someone will win ROY for Portland.

That aside ESPN is so far favoring one-half of the Spanish Connection with Rudy Fernandez coming in at #1 on their Rookie watch, beating out the #1 and #2 picks of Derrick Rose and Michael Beasley. Here’s what they have to say:

We knew he was an excellent perimeter shooter. And his energy in games is a difference-maker. But I didn’t know he was such an excellent shot-maker.

Anyone who saw his one-legged jumper and his below-the-rim, left-handed lob finish against the Suns knows exactly what I mean. Fernandez looks to be in my top five all season.

It’s nice to see Rudy come out as the bright spot so far on this Portland team. Everyone knew that he had the skills to be successful in the NBA, but he is showing it off in spades. He is fearless, knows how to handle the ball and shares the rock. Don’t be surprised if Rudy becomes the next Manu.

So let me just get this out of the way. I, in no way believe that Greg Oden will be a bust…at all. He has looked impressive, with a few noticable things he’ll need to work on. He will be exactly what the Blazers need in the paint in addition to Brandon, LaMarcus, Steve and everyone else. This article is basically me writing from the other side, the haters. The people who have nothing but ill-will against the Blazers. What you read below is going to be harsh, but I also hope that it sparks some conversation.

This is the end of this part 3 series.

*UPDATED Intro: I know this hurts to remind everyone of how disappointing and somber Oden’s debut was, but we’re not a site that doesn’t follow through with things *cough VS series *cough* That being said, I still wanted to finish this article and get some conversation going.

Playing Against the Best

Ideally, I would have finished writing this article before the season started but things get in the way and you’re stuck with my writing this 3 games into the season and with Oden playing (but not finishing) his first NBA game. In his 13-minute long NBA debut, Greg Oden went 0-4 and finished with 5 boards and 1 block. While I am disappointed that he did not manage to score, I’m not about to sound the alarms. 5 boards and 1 block, one heck of a block I may add, are still good numbers to put up in 13 minutes. The thing I will sound the alarm about…sort of…is that Greg Oden was basically helpless against the Laker defense.

They stifled him, drowned him, wrapped him with a big, warm blanket of defense that simply would not allow Greg an easy bucket, or even a chance for that easy bucket. What the Lakers showed on opening night was basically a preview of what every single NBA team will do to Greg Oden this entire season and probably his entire career. They will double, sometimes triple him to the point where he has to struggle to breathe. Sure, not every team has a young talent like Andrew Bynum to combat Oden, but most teams do have the one or two large bodies to simply bother and ruin Oden’s flow. And that is where the concern comes in.

Greg Oden, who has thus far played one NBA game, is essentially being thrown to the wolves. He is big, he has been hyped for over two years now and he has a big target on his back. Teams will throw that pestering and stifling defense at Oden all year. The Lakers executed that type defense to perfection and I feel that many other teams are capable of doing the same thing. Sure, Oden saw double-teams and triple-teams at The Ohio State University, and still managed to do O.K. but that’s the thing. That was college. In the big leagues, he’ll be seeing guys stronger, bigger and faster than anything he played against during his Freshman year. Everyone in Portland saw that as Bynum, Gasol and whomever just would not leave him alone whenever he had the rock.

You couple the fact that Greg Oden will have to fight every night against the double-team with the fact that he’ll be asked to play against some of the league’s best players, and you got issues. How can you expect a 20-year old kid, whom seems keen to injury (not quite injury-prone…) and has only played 13 minutes to defend and play against the likes of Chris Bosh, Dwight Howard, Yao Ming, Shaq, Tim Duncan, Al Jefferson or even maybe even Chris Kaman. These are all established centers who are cornerstones on their respective teams. They have the experience and talent to potentially embarass Greg.

Besides that, those are just the centers in the league. When you start to think about teams with huge, talented defensive-minded front courts like the Suns, Raptors, Lakers, Clippers, Cavaliers, Mavericks and that only accentuates the problems. With good defensive 4’s and 5’s that can also score and both Oden and Portland have a recipe for disappointment and lost potential.

People are already jumping on the wagon to trade Oden, which is just plain ridiculous. Yeah, he’s had a string of bad luck that is nothing to scoff out, considering how numerous and series his injuries have been, but he still hasn’t been given the opportunity to shine. Will Oden take time? Yes. The issue here is that Oden may take longer than normal to start paying dividends and people may grow impatient. Only time will tell, but no one is really sure how much Oden really has to show his stuff.