Portland Reacts To The Loss; When Will The Blazers Actually Win?

There’s tons of good coverage over at Blazersedge, the SB Nation Trail Blazers blog, so head over there to check it out in full. For now, some excerpts from the recap:

In the end the Blazers lost the game because in the midst of all of this Denver started outhustling them. Denver’s defense got more active. After not having a single offensive board the entire game they started corralling their own misses. The Blazers looked like the team coming off a back-to-back late in the fourth while the Nuggets looked fresh. As the clock dwindled the Blazers also missed some critical free throws, with Roy, Miller, Aldridge, and Oden all contributing to the charity stripe leakage. All totaled it was probably only a half-dozen point difference between the hustle and the foul shots, but then again the Blazers only lost by three.

At no time did the Blazers look awful. At no time did they look out of it. But at no time did they put together a sustained, complete game on both ends either. They looked dominant in certain areas (rebounding, ball movement) and had flashes of brilliance in others (individual scoring) but there were too many gaps. Denver tried to hit those gaps and eventually they got through. In short, it was an October-type game for Portland against an opponent they needed to play April ball against. […]

Don’t take this game too much to heart. Games in October don’t really decide anything. (And for those who might not have read me much, yes, I would have said that had the Blazers won as well. You can ask any long-term reader, half of whom get really mad when I temper the significance of a Blazer win that looks better than its effect ultimately turns out to be.) If the Blazers and Nuggets end up tied again we might look back on this and rue the day. And of course it would have been nicer to win. But the way the Blazers are playing right now a loss was coming somewhere. I had it pegged for Saturday at Houston. But maybe this one will wake up the team and take the place of that one. If so, 2-1 is 2-1.

While Ben Golliver took care of things from media row, with a look at Greg Oden, in particular:

Pressure busts pipes.

It’s the nightmare scenario basketball players of all ages fear. Step to the foul line in the final seconds with a chance to put your team over the top in a tight, hard-fought game against a bitter rival. Miss the first, miss the second, ballgame.

That was Greg Oden’s nightmare Thursday night, as Carmelo Anthony of the Denver Nuggets rebounded the second miss, drew a foul, and calmly sunk two free throws on the other end to give the Nuggets a 97-94 victory over the Portland Trail Blazers in the Rose Garden. A desperation heave by Brandon Roy as the clock expired was well wide.

After the game, Oden dressed slowly in a quiet locker room, his back turned to the media throng. Once dressed, he spoke softly and didn’t smile. His first words: “I stepped up there with confidence thinking I was going to hit them and it didn’t go that way. I put this loss on me. I need to step up to make those.”

It was exactly the statement and attitude that you want to hear from Oden in that situation but there were plenty of forks in the road over the course of evening, alternate paths that could have prevented his nightmare scenario, a situation he said he couldn’t remember facing previously during his career.

And while Oden’s once again saying the right things and carrying himself with the utmost class, that doesn’t absolve him of his role in the loss. Just the same, it seems the Blazers are at a similar stage in their evolution—people have been waiting a few seasons for this group to coalesce into something special, and so far, it hasn’t really happened.

Last night was a game they should have won, and while they were certainly dignified in their defeat, they still lost to their biggest division rival at home. It’s only the second game of the season and there’s still plenty of time for the Blazers to grow, but people have been assigning the “there’s still plenty of time” excuse to this group—and Oden, in particular—for the past three years. At some point, it’s time to win games like this.