Sunday, January 13, 2008

Blazers vs. Raptors 1/13/08

Unfortunately. I missed the first 3 quarters of this game but turned in just in time when the action was getting wicked. Blazers had a 6 point cushion going into the 4th and basically, Nate McMillan, coach of the month or not, blew this game for my Blazers. Chirs Bosh was absolutely having his way with LaMarcus Aldridge and was the main catalyst behind Toronto's comeback. They turned a six point deficit into a 7 point lead with about 4 minutes to go. But, with an all-star game from Brandon Roy and great shooting from "Mr. 4th Quarter" Travis Outlaw (Mike Rice's nickname for "T-Law" aka "Trout"), the Blazers would mount a comeback of their own. I wasn't too happy with Nate's usage of timeouts... He burned 2 timeouts around the 1:25 mark in the 4th quarter after the team had advanced the ball past half-court of all things too and ran out of timeouts by the 45 second mark or so, thus the Blazers would not have extra timeouts to advance the ball. Way to go dumbass, but because of Travis Outlaw's sick 4 point play to force OT, he bailed Nate out.

You figure that after getting dominated by Chris Bosh that Nate McMillan would redeem himself in overtime by putting his best rebounder and defender into the game to guard Bosh... Nope... Blazers played well and maintained a 2 point lead throughout most of the 1st OT, but in the end, Bosh and Calderon were too much... Again, it took another bailout three, this time by Roy, to salvage Nate and the Blazers...

2nd OT starts off w/Bosh winning the jumpball again and scoring a quick 4 points that would catapult the Raptors to victory... Again, after the timeout, no Pryzbilla...

I am still mind-boggled by the Blazers winning streak w/McMillan as the coach... the guy seems to be clueless in matchups and substituting players in the right situation, yet the team keeps winning and thus, somehow, gave him Coach of the Month honors... Maybe this current road trip will test Nate's coaching ability, but its scary to think how great this Blazer team can be with Greg Oden and Rudy Fernandez coming next year, and/or getting a coach that knows what he's doing...

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