- First, check out my breakdown of the best game of the weekend, Rockets-Blazers v.3.
- I cannot overstress how amazing the Artest-Battier double team was in Game 3. Roy would come off a baseline off-the-ball screen, get the ball on the left corner, and they would spring it. Roy might as well have run into razor wire. Both of them, arms straight up and swiping. He’d toss it over the double to Aldridge, who was blanketed by Scola. Now, for some reason,the Blazers didn’t pull a perimeter rotation to the top of the key to allow the swing to the other side. Instead they forced Aldridge, who’s a black hole anyway, to make a difficult pass cross-court. If he got it there and Fernandez could catch it, he’d knock it down. But several times it resulted in Von Wafer dunks.
- In Game 4, the Blazers seemed to understand their dependence on Roy a little more and pushed him. To the tune of 31. That the Rockets were still able to come up with answers is a huge step of confidence for them.
- But then, that’s not that difficult when the Rockets are able to get both Ming and Scola off. When that happens there’s really no good option. You then go from having to pick your poison to drinking both poisons and hoping neither one will kill you. And the Blazers did not spend months developing an immunity to iocaine powder.
- In Games 1 and 3, the Blazers experienced the loneliness when your stars are limited, restricted, handcuffed. In Game 4, they experienced the other. When your start players get theirs, and the rest of the team is muted, bagged, and stuffed in a trunk.
- Shane Battier. Mock him for the NY Times article. Call him overrated. The man gets the job done. He’s Winston Wolf in Pulp Fiction. He solves problems. What? You need two huge three pointers down the stretch? No problem.
- Blazers fans were pretty vocal about how they would have the point guard advantage in this series. But the Rockets total frontcourt has been better than the Blazers total frontcourt. Brooks in particular has played really well, and smart within the offense. Blakedoesn’t force things, and his numbers were good in Games 2 and 3, but you always feel like Brooks, Wafer, and Lowry are making more plays. Probably need to see a usage breakdown on those guys and a PER look. But hey, it’s okay. It’s not like the Blazers have a super talented combo guard with devastating speed sitting on the bench who they’ve buried and who could provide them life. Not at all. FREE BAYLESS.
- If I’m Portland, I keep funneling the ball to Artest. Just slide off the screen a little slow. Slide under all the screens. Just tease him into it. The best part is that once he starts, he has a harder time stopping. The more he misses, the more he wants to shoot. I’d put him in that spot and let him hang himself.
- Travis Outlaw. The Poor Man’s Ben Gordon. A one man possession killing machine.
- I was so impressed with Oden in Game 3. Yeah, The Dynasty was not as amused.
- Chuck Hayes was terrible last year? Now? He’s a poor, broken, homeless, panhandling man’s Kurt Thomas or Antonio McDyess. There are worse gigs.
- This has been the best series in the playoffs. Yes, better than Celts-Bulls. Blazers-Houston is two teams with incredible talent and terrific executing doing that. Bulls-Celtics is a race to see if the Bulls will start screwing up as normal and waiting for Boston to stop screwing up. Don’t get me wrong, I’m on the Rost-Tyrus Thomas-Kirk Hinrich train. But this series is tremendous basketball. And I think we’ll get seven games out of it, despite the Rockets lead.
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Point guards play in the backcourt, not the frontcourt.
Great observation about Artest though. That guy almost single handedly keeps opponents in so many games with his horrendous shooting and his insistence on continuing to fire away. He’s like Kobe in a cold slump taken to the nth degree with his ball domination and asinine shots. And yet, when Artest takes the ball to the hole or gets it down low he’s nearly impossible to stop. I wonder how many coaches have torn their hair out trying to get him to just take better shots.
You’re right that this has been the best series of the playoffs though. I’d actually put New Orleans-Denver higher on the “entertaining scale”, but these Houston-Portland games have really been phenomenal. Barkley was right last night when he said if Portland ever gets a post game they’re going to be scary. For that to happen though, Greg Oden has got to learn not only how to score in the post, but how to stay away from his bizarre desire to bump just about everyone out on the perimeter. Save those fouls for the defense in the paint, G.O.
OK, this is late and tangential to the post, but the line on Battier reminded me…
Am I the only one who feels like the “Shane Battier is underrated-to-Shane Battier is overrated” transition happens like once every four or five years? I remember these discussions making the rounds a while ago, and I vaguely seem to remember having them when he was drafted (though I could be imagining that to make my point, I can’t tell)… all I know is that when I read the piece a few weeks ago (or whenever it was) about him, the first thing I thought was, “wait, am I reading an archive piece and didn’t realize it?”
I really thought we’d already covered the whole “Battier’s good in ways you can’t really quantify but that doesn’t make him a great player, it just makes him what he is–a good player” thing a long time ago… and yet somehow the recent piece made Morey seem like some sort of genius, and that before his crazy proprietary statistical analysis, nobody’d figured out that Battier could play help defense and wasn’t a jackass in the locker room.
Or maybe I’m just crazy. It’s been known to happen.