The Blazers stepped into "The Mecca" of NBA stadiums aka Madison Square Garden last night and things didn't look stellar early. The open shots weren't falling, Greg Oden put of a stinker and missed a couple of easy dunks, the Knicks were getting to the FT line w/ease, Chris Duhon was once again a super beast with 23 points and 13 dimes, and the Blazers would somehow only find themselves only down by as much as 9.
Brandon Roy would be a catalyst getting to the rim on numerous occasions to get easy layups versus New York's second worst rated defense. Roy finished with 23-6-5 (and 3 steals).
Roy had help in the second half by what I call the "Four Horseman" aka The Four White Guy (Team) consisting of Steve Blake, RUUUUUUUUUDDDYYY Fernanadez, "Spanish Chocolate" SUUUUURGIO Rodriguez, and "The Vanilla Gorilla" "Przyilla" Joel Przybilla. That's right!! This is a rare thing as I can only recall 2 other teams in my era (1983 to the present). Now you can compare us to the Jazz of the 1990s (John Stockton, Jeff Hornacek, Mark Eaton, and Tom Chambers) and the late 90s to the Kings of the early 2000s (Bibby, Peja, Brad Miller, and "Floppy D" Vlade Divac)!!
Rudy got the 4th quarter started with a few threes including a sick stepback three against the shot clock. Sergio was finding the open man and finished with 4 assists (hence the bad FG%), and hit a huge three in the 4th. Rudy and Sergio had the best "Plus/Minus" ratio of +14!!
Blake hit some timely shots when the Blazers trailed that never ballooned NY's lead to double diggits...
AND then there's Joel!! Joel got the crunch time minutes over an ineffective Oden. Joel was doing everything from rebounding and getting a number of tip in points. And on defense, when we needed a stop against a high powered D'Antoni offense, he was the man!! A great article from ESPN's Henry Abbott about Mr. Przybilla's performance on the right corner of the page. Joel finished with eight points, 14 rebounds and two HUGE blocks.
Next stop, D.C!
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