This year we've seen the following players lose significant time to injury: Travis Outlaw (broken foot), Rudy Fernandez (bad back), Joel Przybilla (broken kneecap), Jeff Pendergraph (bad hip), Steve Blake (pneumonia), LaMarcus Aldridge (sprained ankle), Greg Oden (broken kneecap), and now our star Brandon Roy has missed a significant amount of time with a hamstring injury. I'm probably forgetting some people. Hell, even our coach tore his Achilles tendon in practice, and for good measure, our owner now has cancer. You would think that the injury curse would end with the whole cancer thing, but no, that was in December and we had several more injuries since then. Even after going through all that, the Blazers still are set for a playoff spot in the ultra-competitive Western Conference. I think any fan is thrilled with this, with the only drawback being that the bastards from Oklahoma City are ahead of the Blazers right now.
Things began to turn the night Greg Oden was injured. Mr. Zhuang and I were out having a nice relaxing drink, when I received a text from a friend telling me that not only was Oden injured, he was going to be out for the year. We must have looked like a car just ran over our dog, because the bartender notices our "someone shat in our cereal" look, and gives us free drinks when we tell him the news. Cynics and fans who don't pay attention may ask, "What did you expect, Oden is Mr. Glass?" but these are the same people who hadn't watched him develop over the past two seasons like we had. This year, Oden was making a leap and was showing flashes of becoming the dominant center that we had hoped for when we drafted him, commanding the middle and being the one consistent player we had in the beginning of the season, and then in an instant it was gone.
It was all the more painful when you consider how Oden and Portland are made for each other. They're each slightly goofy and more than a little awkward, and have great senses of humor (I mean, Oden's dog's name is "Charles Barkley McLovin"). The first thing he said when he was injured was "I'm sorry" to his teammates; this was a man whose patella had just been dislocated and was somewhere down his shin at this point. And as soon as they took him to the training room, he was asking for updated scores to the game. With another serious injury, critics will again have ammunition for their "Should have picked Kevin Durant" argument, especially considering his explosive scoring average and the great record that Oklahoma City has these days. Of course, these people fail to consider the difference in development that Durant would have as a third option on the Blazers versus the number one guy on a crappy team for a couple of years; those who are also quick to doubt Oden also fail to realize that Oden is only 21, and he will get more used to his body as the years go by--he has not begun to reach his ceiling. But instead of another year of great development, we're left with questions about his johnson instead.
But the Blazers never threw in the towel, and each night it's been a different player stepping up, from the ever-developing Martell Webster to the ageleass Juwan Howard (who must have found a time machine back to 1995). Perhaps the biggest surprise has been Andre Miller, who I thought was a terrible signing and a poor fit for this team, but who has on occasion lifted the team up on his shoulders and carried them. But you get the feeling that this team is the equivalent of a car held together by duct tape, and that's probably why it made sense for the Blazers to make a trade this week.
However, the trade while it made sense to most outsiders, just doesn't feel completely right to me. When you're relying on Juwan Howard to play the center position for over thirty minutes a game, it's probably not a recipe for playoff success. So it's understandable that we would want to target someone like Marcus Camby, who is one of the league leaders in rebounding, and give up fan favorites Steve Blake and Travis Outlaw in the process. But if you look at the stats, interior defense was not where we were lacking; we weren't even a bad defensive team! In fact, we were number three in points allowed, and tops in the Western Conference; and while we were not getting that many rebounds, we were still out-rebounding the other time. No, if you watched our games, our problem was more with failure to rotate from the perimeter and a total absence of a crunch-time offensive game. That's where guys like Blake and Outlaw are helpful--Steve hits the spot-up 3, and Outlaw has the balls to get to the hoop in the 4th. We'll see if this move ends up paying off, but I have my doubts.
Bill Simmons joked that Blazer fans are like those soccer parents who get obsessed with their little kid, the kind that are hypersensitive to any criticism and irrationally attached to everything they do. I'll certainly agree with this to an extent--we certainly do have our irrational attachments, and tend to overvalue our players more than necessary. That's why you'll find fans of Steve Blake and Travis Outlaw all around Portland, and we coddle Greg Oden. However, we're still realistic, and we will call out our players when necessary--we want LaMarcus to step up in the fourth quarter, and when Brandon Roy was whining at the beginning of the season, we weren't afraid to let him hear it.
But for now, we'll relax and take that 8th seed in the playoffs. And we'll continue enjoying the commentary of Barrett and Rice, like this memorable exchange:
Mike Barrett: So we'll stay the extra night in Minnesota. Who would want to get into New Orleans at 2 am?
Mike Rice: Do I really have to explain it to you?
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