Anyway, notes (and some photos) from tonight's loss to the Memphis Grizzlies.
Pre-game warm-ups.
First Quarter
- Promising start to the game. LaMarcus Aldridge rejects the first shot out of Pau Gasol's hands, and then at the other end Z-Bo rebounds not once, but twice to chase down the ball and score. This would end up being a nice night for Zach on the glass...
- Early on, Pau Gasol was money. He slowed down later, but for awhile he was unstoppable.
- LA follows a strong start with two quick fouls in the first four minutes. He left the game and was never able to establish any sort of rhythm for the night. The first sign of trouble.
- Magloire comes in and starts out plodding on offense and defense. My initial notes on him: "this guy doesn't fight for rebounds, doesn't battle for position, doesn't create any shots. And he thinks he's an All-Star caliber player still?"
- Martell is COLD. He's missed every shot he's taken, and yet they keep trying to feed him. They need instead to pull him. The problem is that all they have to replace him tonight is Travis Outlaw, and you never know what you're gonna get with him.
- Rudy Gay is here tonight. One of the chief rivals for ROY with Brandon Roy. It warms my heart to see him totally clank on a dunk attempt, then bring the ball down on the next play and blow a three-point attempt. If only we could capitalize.
- Mark Mason, the Blazers PA announcer, is a good guy. Love his radio show. But each time he calls out "one-plus-one" when it's time for free-throws, I want to just kill him. How effing annoying...
- End of quarter: score 24 all. Lines on Roy and Rudy:
Points Assists Rebounds
Roy 5 2 0
Gay 4 1 0
Line on Z-Bo:
15 3 5
- Magloire's starting to come alive, which is a nice surprise.
- Martell persists in his outlandish coldness. He's 0-4 from 3-point range and has 0 points. Thankfully, coach pulls him early in the quarter.
- Dan Dickau's in! I didn't think this happened...
- I'm pleasantly surprised by Z-Bo's defense tonight. He's hustling at both ends and is really getting after it. Not what I normally see when I watch him.
- With 3:20 left, I look up at some stats. We're shooting 41% from the field and 67% from the free throw line. Not good. In the end, we'll see that free throws killed us. At this point, we're seeing the start of it, as the refs are just KILLING us. At this point in the game, Memphis has already shot 15 free throws to our 9 (and they're shooting 100%...).
- With 3:00 left, we've hit a drought. The score is 36-46. Jarrett Jack is in, and I'm impressed with the variety of ways he can avoid taking shots. I swear they aren't even defending him because they know he's not posing a threat.
- End of half, we've caught up a bit. Score 46-50. Free throw attempts: Us - 13, Them - 21 (and still 100%). Lines on Roy and Rudy: 0
Points Assists Rebounds
Roy 9 2 1
Gay 6 2 1
Line on Z-Bo:
21 4 8
Jarrett Jack, absolutely not a threat to take a shot...
- Martell finally scores, sinking the second of two free throws. This is about as productive as he'll be all night.
- I love Brandon Roy. I just watched him manufacture something from nothing, as he got the ball and cut through everyone on the court, scoring in spite of the rest of his team.
- Shortly after, Travis Outlaw decides to actually play some ball. He sparks a brief flurry of Portland activity with a ludicrous dunk. As I watch him, I can't help but notice how wildly out of control he plays. He is so strong and athletic, and yet he's so clueless at the same time. He ends up being the second leading scorer on the team tonight, a testament to how it's often better to be lucky than good.
- The refs are destroying us. Zach gets called on a non-foul of Gasol, then on the next play Gasol mugs Z-Bo under the hoop and the ref swallows his whistle. You'd think with all of his money, Paul Allen could buy an official here and there.
- Roy continues to impress. His stats are off tonight, but he's doing all the dirty work that doesn't show up on the stat sheet. In a 15 second span, he's on the floor twice fighting for, and getting, turn-overs on poorly-handled Memphis possessions.
- End of third quarter: 66-69. Lines on Roy and Rudy:
Points Assists Rebounds
Roy 13 3 2
Gay 10 3 2
Line on Z-Bo:
28 4 12
Zach, post-mugging.
- I'm disappointed to have only had one beer tonight. However, I got a seat in the Lexus Club Level, so I'm happy to have scored 3 free Diet Cokes, a free slice of pizza, a free Polish sausage, and a free bucket of popcorn. I'll be leaving tonight with a pocket of Diet Coke in one pocket and a bottle of Oregon Rain bottled water in the other. This is, as they say, very nice.
- Local luminaries seen at the game tonight: Joe Becker from KGW bouncing around the 100 level, looking like he was on his way to get some food; former Gresham City Councilor Jacquenette McIntyre, who sat two rows in front of me and never looked back long enough for me to say hi (dealt with her alot when I worked as a DA out in Gresham); Bill Schonely giving some dude a big thumbs up as he left immediately prior to the final buzzer, looking a little too happy given that he's the face of the franchise and we've blown what should have been a certain victory. But I'm getting ahead of myself now.
- There's these two girls sitting three rows up. The back of their shirts says "Stoudamire #3" in black Sharpie. The fronts say "We're bringing sexy back." I don't get it. One of them keeps bending forward to show whoever's watching (which, apparently, is me) her butt crack. They cheer after each of Memphis' improbably high number of free throws. I think I hate them.
- Z-Bo is unconscious tonight. With 9 minutes to go, he's got 34 and 15. And we're losing. More on this in a bit...
- Finally, we take the lead. 74-73. We give the team a standing ovation, which somewhat annoys me considering that we should have had the lead about three-and-a-half quarters ago.
- Outlaw is coming on strong. He's making some pretty nice shots. He's also, though, takings some that he shouldn't, and it'll come back to bite us by the end of the game.
- Sergio Rodriguez is in. As much as I've been resisting it, he is our starting PG of the future. Jarrett Jack is stagnant and slows down our offense. Sergio is lively. Only complaint tonight is that he has several opportunities to shoot 3's and passes on them all.
- Gay finally gets his dunk with 5:42 left. He's warming up, finally. Given what I've heard of him, I'm frankly unimpressed.
- I actually just yelled "what the fuck are you doing?" at a shot Outlaw took. The wheels may be coming off.
- 4:02 left, score's 84-85. Why? This is friggin' MEMPHIS.
- Outlaw somehow gets the ball with 29 seconds left and us down by two. Is this the guy you want taking those shots? The answer is obvious when he airs it out on a very long two-point attempt.
- We lose, 92-96. Final lines on Roy and Rudy:
Points Assists Rebounds
Roy 13 5 4
Gay 18 4 3
Final line on Z-Bo:
43 5 17
This man can't be stopped.
The Sizzle/Fizzle board says so much.
Final thoughts
Z-Bo was amazing. Yet we lost to a team that we should have beat. I can't help wondering if this a coincidence. Since Zach's been back, we've gone 0-3 after going 3-0 with him gone. And we're losing games we should really have a shot at, especially with a player of Zach's caliber on the floor. What gives?
I think Z-Bo stymies the offense of the other players on the team. Which would be fine if Z-Bo were, say, Kobe, and if we were the Lakers. They're designed to complement Kobe. And Kobe's dominant on both ends of the floor.
The Blazers are designed to get scoring from more than one person. When you have a game where the ball gets pushed into one guy, and the guy shows a propensity for taking shots when he could pass (really, Zach should've had a triple-double tonight, except he's not very good at passing to an open man when the defense collapses on him), then the team can't get the production it should. LaMarcus is a legitmate 15 point guy right now, but he was held to 6 tonight. Roy is a 20 point guy right now, but was held to 13. I think a lot of this has to deal with the fact that they aren't being fed shots they should.
I've picked on Zach alot, so I know this may come off as me being a hater. But I can't help wondering if the result wouldn't have been different with him sitting out, even though he scored a career-high 43 tonight. I think if other guys had a chance to get into a rhythm, it would've paid dividends all over (like on the free-throw line, where we shot an abysmal 69%, or from 3-point land, where we were 0-11 overall).
After the game, I heard a couple of things that I thought were interesting. First, Coach McMillan was on the Fifth Quarter on KXL and noted that the disparity in free throws had a lot to do with weak defense by our squad. Alot of reaching and grabbing and not enough moving of the feet and chasing the ball. But he also seemed to imply that the officiating was a bit ludicrous, and I tend to agree.
From Charles Barkley on NBA Tonight: "The Grizzlies are like the Washington Generals." My thoughts exactly. We had no business losing this game.
Today Roy was on Colin Cowherd's ESPN radio show. He noted that he thinks that next year we should make the play-offs. With the current squad, I'm not so sure.
My off-season wish list:
- Move Z-Bo. He's a great player, and his value is going to be at its peak after this season. But we have LaMarcus, who is the future for us at PF, and we need to pull a legitimate big-time small forward. After tonight's game, Kevin Pritchard paid lip-service to bringing both Ime Udoka and Travis Outlaw, our current SF platoon, back in the off-season. I can see bringing both back. But as back-ups, not as starters. We NEED to upgrade. And for anyone hoping that Darius Miles will come back, I feel pretty confident that he'll never lace 'em up again as a Blazer.
- Draft a center. Joel and Jamaal are fine for now, but we need to develop the player of tomorrow. LaMarcus is not a center, and we need to move him to the PF, where he belongs. And the truth is that, without a legitimate star at center, we aren't going to go anywhere, even if we make the play-offs. Go back 15 years and look at who won the championship. Unless the teams had Michael Jordan (who still always had a real-life center on his squads, even if they weren't star centers), they had Shaq, or Duncan, or Olajuwon, or Ben Wallace. Portland's best recent seasons included Sabonis, who was a big fat turd but who took up a lot of space, made scoring more difficult, and had some offensive talent. Right now we have little offense and spotty defense at center. We won't be able to trade for a good center, since everyone's aging at this point. We need to draft a real big man and train him up. I don't think it's a coincidence that all of the NBA draft boards I've seen have the Blazers drafting a center with their first pick. I think that's where we need to go.
- Move Jarrett Jack (this hurts to say...I love the guy). He deserves to start somewhere, I think. But he's not our guy, and he doesn't fill our needs. We need to turn the keys over to Sergio, build his confidence, and bring in a role-player (a shooter) to back him up.
- Do something with Darius. I don't like the idea of him lurking out there, almost certain not to come back but always a possibility. Darius has always intrigued every team that's had the displeasure of dealing with him with his potential. I don't see that changing. The "what if he can come back" thoughts won't stop swirling in the minds of the powers-that-be at One Center Court, and that alone is reason enough to dump him. I don't want any planning going on for the future that involves the possibility of Darius coming back. I don't see the benefit. That said, I know it's hard to just waive him and carry the money on our books. But it's only two more years, and I honestly think we're that far away from the play-offs anyway.
And so it goes.
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