Blazers<\/span> gave the Blazers a chip on their shoulders toward a team that, whatever the future may herald, is at the moment not good.<\/p>\nSacramento, the team with the worst record in the league, teased it out before Denver finally pulled ahead to nab the division title.\u00c2\u00a0 It was wishful thinking to hope that Sacramento could pull that one out.\u00c2\u00a0 Meanwhile, a moment of exasperation came with the Warriors versus the Spurs<\/span>: with one second left in the game, the Spurs hit the game winning three point.\u00c2\u00a0 Which would be alright, except that the shot clock<\/span> had expired.\u00c2\u00a0 The consolation for the irritated Blazers fan, eyeing the home court magic number<\/span>: the Spurs would have probably won in overtime anyway.<\/p>\nWith those games settled, Wednesday came around and there was three games Blazer fan had reason to watch.\u00c2\u00a0 The opimum outcome would have been that the Spurs lost to the Hornets and the Rockets lost to the Mavericks, ensuring that a Blazers victory get the team a three-seed against the Hornets.\u00c2\u00a0 The worst outcome was the Rockets losing and the Spurs winning — ensuing a match-up with the Rockets, who present match-up problems for the Blazers.\u00c2\u00a0 Which is what happened.\u00c2\u00a0 And how did that scenario happen?<\/p>\n
Hornets up by 3.\u00c2\u00a0 And Damned if James Posey<\/span> for the Hornets didn’t miss his 2 free throws.\u00c2\u00a0 Make either, and the game is over — Blazers to play Portland to move up the seedings to play the Hornets and avoid Houston.\u00c2\u00a0 Posey missed both.\u00c2\u00a0 Spurs threw in 3 pointer, won in overtime.\u00c2\u00a0 So, off of one missed free throw (either one), Hornets cost the Blazers a play off seeding — and pushed the road into LA up a round. Damned Hornets.\u00c2\u00a0 Then again, that was a demonstration of why they would have wanted to play the Hornets in the playoffs in the first place.\u00c2\u00a0 Also, perhaps it might have worked out well for the Hornets — if they thought they had a better shot against Denver than the Blazers.\u00c2\u00a0 (Probably a 50 – 50 proposition: the Blazers probably have both more up-side and more down-side on this one.)<\/p>\nBut, hey.\u00c2\u00a0 Compare them to the 1977 Championship team, and they may have the perfect route to improve as the playoffs continue.\u00c2\u00a0 Emerge from the series against Houston, and you’ll come out a better team for it.\u00c2\u00a0 Then comes the Lakers<\/span>.\u00c2\u00a0 Reading between the lines, the Blazers finally have the Lakers’ attention.\u00c2\u00a0 You can’t really call it a “rivalry” as of yet, sure — the Blazers fans chant “BEAT LA!” (parochial: small city versus big city.\u00c2\u00a0 See shirt at the top of this blog entry.\u00c2\u00a0 Suppose the Blazers do make it to the Finals against Cleveland, or even merely beat the Lakers.\u00c2\u00a0 Will there be a “Beat Denver”, “Beat San Antonio”, or “Beat Cleveland” or “Beat Boston”?), and they always defeat the Lakers win they play in Portland.\u00c2\u00a0 But that’s been the equivalent of a buzzing mosquito.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s finally mattering enough for the Lakers to pay any attention.\u00c2\u00a0 Hence, Phil Jackson doesn’t bother coming to Portland that last game, cites a re-play on the Jumbo Tron of the hard foul from the last game with “Portland is like that”, and explains the losing streak in Portland as coming because it’s a dreary place with a lot of sad people in the stands.\u00c2\u00a0 And hence a quick search through the LA Times shows up — well, look it up yourself… it’s kind of interesting.<\/p>\nIf I had to guess, the Blazers win the series against the Rockets.\u00c2\u00a0 The home court is everything here.\u00c2\u00a0 And the Lakers defeat the Blazers in six games.\u00c2\u00a0 Do the math, and you’ll find that means the Lakers do indeed win in Portland, finally.\u00c2\u00a0 I suppose this is slightly disappointing in the realm of “optics”, both for ending a good streak of home victories and because the post-season record between Portland<\/span> and LA is not too good:\u00c2\u00a0 Clyde Drexler dribbles away a victory in the early 1990s, and that seventh game fourth quarter meltdown of 2000.\u00c2\u00a0 Then again, these things have to switch over –unexpectedly — at some point, and Mr. “ZenMaster” seems to be concentrating his “Zen” tricks on the Blazers.\u00c2\u00a0 In a dozen years, it is hoped that the Blazers will be roughly where the Spurs are right now: probably ending their spell as an elite team, but standing there with four championships in the past decade.<\/p>\nBear in mind, I am a complete Homer and will cease to have any interest in the NBA playoffs once the Blazers fall out of the playoffs, as the nation awaits that inevitable Lebron Cleveland versus Kobe LA match-up.\u00c2\u00a0 If that sounds both parochial and absurd, I’ll state for the record:\u00c2\u00a0 Spectator sports is ridiculous anyways.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I saw this man wearing a red t-shirt emblazened with the words “BEAT LA”.\u00c2\u00a0 This shirt is an item of absurdity.\u00c2\u00a0 It is either getting too far ahead of oneself, or not going far enough.\u00c2\u00a0 Round One of the playoffs is Against Houston.\u00c2\u00a0 Round two is against LA.\u00c2\u00a0 The Finals (Round 4) would probably be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3793"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3793\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3794,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3793\/revisions\/3794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}