The Taste of McMuffin'... Bitter!!

Feels like a Bill Simmons's like diary... cue Adam Carolla... (Dear, Online diary...),

Remember Mike Dunleavy's timeout in the 2000 Western Conference Finals vs. the Lakers after the Blazers built a 15 or 17 point lead in the 4th quarter after Phil Jackson refused to call a timeout going down as the "Worst timeout called in Blazer history..." You all know what happened and I'll leave it at that... Well, number "# 2" happened tonight:

With a 5 point lead with 53 seconds left DRIBBLING past halfcourt, McMuffin' calls a 20 second timeout leaving the Blazers with one 20 left... Now, I can maybe understand a timeout if you're behind a bucket or two, or even up one, two, or three points.... but 5. (I notice McMuffin' loves to do these timeouts which is pure stupid and also, his calling 20 sec. timeouts after one FT so you can't advance the ball to halfcourt). I immediately told my dad that that was a terrible timeout for those reasons I mentioned above the parenthesis. Then, when the Blazers had to call a second timeout, I knew we had a great possibility of losing the game... Then, cue Mike Rice on you want to have one of these timeouts down the stretch in case of a f*** up and then a really Kevin Pritchard mind-boggled face... And what happens off the timeout... you guessed it... a turnover that turned into 3 points for Orlando to cut the lead to 2 with 29 seconds left and NOW with no timeouts, we get off a corner prayer three by Roy with a hand in his face that airballs and now Oralndo calls timeout... I tell my dad that YES, we are gonna lose this game now and low and behold... Turkoglu hits the 3 to give Orlando the one point win...

Not even with all the bloggers and forums out there that have expressed their (smart) opinions of playing Joel in the 4th quarter (McMuffin' failed to realize this until after mid season last year), to playing Sergio more, starting Batum or Rudy over Travis at the start of the season, whatever it may be... I still can't get the bitter taste of McMuffin' out of my mouth after this one...

Oh So Sweet in Orlando!!

Woah! What a refreshing way to start a long road trip for the young Blazer team. I have to admit that I didn't think we had a chance against a hot Orlando Magic team who have won four straight coming into tonight.

As the last two road games vs. the Suns and Jazz, the Blazers were able to build a nice lead early but then fade somewhere in the middle to the end. As eerie as this game was as the momentum shifted to the Magic as they headed into the final quarter with the lead, the Blazers wouldn't let the fourth quarter happen tonight.

Shutting down Dwight Howard to 6 points and 7 rebounds in the second half after
his first half one-man wrecking crew performance of domination of drawing fouls on Joel Pryzbilla in a total of nine minutes (although 3 were chicken poo calls) and scoring 23 points and hauling in 12 rebounds. Good-grief!! That's a phenomenal full game line, let alone a 1st half!!

I hate to admit this, but I liked what Coach McMillan (yes, he deserve his name to be called right after tonight) did. For once, he stuck with the bench team that helped pull away in the fourth quarter adhering from the normality of taking them out after the first couple minutes even if things were working. I also liked that Nate tried a lineup that included Roy, Rudy, Sergio at the same time, even if it was only for a minute. I don't like the fact that Nate likes to slow things down when you're the second youngest team in the NBA and you could easily have an advantage of running the elder teams around to death. A team can only stay young for so long as injuries, trades, etc happen so I think it is best that he experiment with it while he can.

Next up, Miami! If we can beat Orlando, which I didn't think could happen, I am definitely more optimistic about the Heat game. Keep Blazin'!!