With the Portland Trail Blazers starting their 2014-15 season in five days against the Kevin Durant-less Oklahoma City Thunder, I think it appropriate to express my excitement thus: Aaaaaahhhh snap yo!!!
Although the hours I work at my day job unfortunately coincide with the majority of Blazer games happening (not that I could watch them anyway. Thanks Comcast!), I’ve learned to glean whatever snippets of info about the game and individual performances from box scores and the occasional highlight. On weekends, watching the Blazers will be a welcome alternative to watching college football, AKA Supreme King of Corruption and Disgusting Blight on the Sports World. (What else can you call a sport that lets an alleged sex offender in Jameis Winston play, yet quashes the college career of Todd Gurley for selling stuff featuring his likeness?) I could also switch over whenever the San Francisco 49ers are getting pounded by the Seattle Seahawks, or as they’re better known this season, the Coastal Chickens.
(And Seachicken fans, quit whining about the official’s emphasis on DB contact. Everyone was warned, everybody is hurt by it, and I’ve heard WAY too much complaining from the players as it is. Also, if Doug Baldwin is your best receiver…well, poor Russell Wilson. It isn’t fun, even for me, to see him run for his life 20 snaps a game because those scrubs can’t get separation…despite those rules you complain about.)
As for NBA-related scuttlebutt, some Ruminations for your reading pleasure:
On the way to work on Monday, I picked up a copy of the Portland Tribune and happened upon a few choice comments from Kerry Eggers, the Tribune’s excellent sports columnist, about Russell Westbrook, the Oklahoma City point guard. He said, “Westbrook is a million dollar talent with a ten-cent mind.” Eggers also called Westbrook selfish, a shameless chucker, and ended by saying “Maybe Westbrook can be the leader the Thunder need while Durant heals. I’m not holding my breath.”
Well, then.
I admit I’m not a Westbrook fan, either; there’s too much Gary Payton in Westbrook, though Payton never played with someone better than he was, something Westbrook has done his entire career. He can be wild and reckless on both ends of the floor, and the main reason Serge Ibaka pops out to the 18-foot line like LaMarcus Aldridge instead of dominating the paint like Blake Griffin is Westbrook ALWAYS deciding to drive to the hole on a pick play with Ibaka, despite the wall of massive men waiting to plant him like a petunia. He’s a great finisher, but he’s had several knee surgeries already. OKC needs him healthy.
However, Westbrook is not the problem for Oklahoma City. The problem is that there are only three credible offensive threats on that team, and Anthony Morrow is a craptastic defender who’ll give away as many points as he scores. Eggers can old-man rant all he wants about Westbrook’s chucking, but that might be the only way the Thunder can survive without Durant, thanks to Scott Brooks’ lack of imagination and a bench that gave the Blazers’ reserves a run for their money as the worst in the league last year.
If Oklahoma City starts off the year by getting obliterated by a more balanced Portland team, and struggles to break even, Westbrook will unfairly get all the blame even though he’s the least of the Thunder’s worries–for once.
Shifting focus to another of the Blazers’ antagonists, it seems that Los Angeles Lakers coach Byron Scott is stuck in 1987. If you’ve been perusing your favorite national sports site lately, you’ve probably come across a Scott quote saying that he intends to abandon the 3-point shot, that defense will be an emphasis for the Lakers this year, and that Kobe Bryant totally is healthy enough to be an impact player.
I’ll give Scott the bit about Bryant; he’s been rusty in preseason, but in the last couple games he played, he looked like the guy I’ve been watching play basketball since I was 12. The fade away jumper he adopted to save his body more wear and tear several years ago will now be his weapon of choice, and he can still hit that shot over anyone.
Unfortunately, this is where I drag out my big anime hammer and smack Scott over the head, hoping to knock some sense into him. The antipathy towards Mike D’Antoni has always been over the top–a product of dealing with lunatics in Laker Land on a daily basis.
Trying to actively abandon a key pillar of offense in today’s NBA simply because a man Laker fans hated for over a decade made excessive use of it is like slicing off three of your fingers just because they’re knobbly while the others are straight. Sure, they might not be pretty, and they’re harder to move, but they’re still fingers. They still have utility as a part of the whole, like the 3-point shot has utility as a part of a team’s offense. You must be able to score from anywhere in the half-court in today’s game, yet Scott is happily hacking away at his team’s fingers to spite their hands.
And don’t get me started on the defense; a team that plans to give big minutes to Carlos Boozer, Nick Young, Jeremy Lin, a rookie Julius Randle, and a guy in Kobe Bryant that hasn’t been good on defense in five years will be awful. Not your run-of-the-mill awful, either. The only reason this year’s Lakers will be better on defense than five cadavers is because the players are alive, at least until the losing numbs them down or Bryant goes all Scarface on the locker room because they’re 10-35.
(Say ‘ello to mah little friend!)
Looking at Portland’s schedule, one finds a whole heaping pile of trouble in the first two weeks. After taking on the Thunder Wednesday and traveling to Sacramento a week from today (games I’ll preview on Monday, foreshadowing for the win), the Blazers take on the Golden State Warriors, the Cleveland Cavaliers, and the Dallas Mavericks in succession at home, the travel to Los Angeles to play the Clippers. Then, they have a home-and-home with the Denver Nuggets, a team that always gives Portland fits, with a home tilt against the much-improved Charlotte Hornets sandwiched between the Denver games.
That’s a hellacious opening slate, chaps and chapesses. If Portland heads into their November 15 home game against the Brooklyn Nets at 5-4, I’ll be really pleased. Anything better than that should be treated as gravy.
Good news after the 15th: other than the two games Portland plays annually against the Chicago Bulls, as well as the December 15 home game against the San Antonio Spurs, the Blazers’ schedule is as soft as the belly fur of a puppy. If they can break even during the first half of November, we could be looking at another explosive start to a season.
The Blazers likely won’t be 24-5 at Christmas like they were last year, but anything less than 20-10 (they’ll have played 30 games by Christmas this year) should be considered a disappointment, as well as a cause for legitimate concern.
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