Simmons on Blazers

[tlongII]

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/081028

5. The 2009 Blazers will become the single most popular team in the history of the Internets



These guys bring everything to the Internet bandwagon table: Youth; likeability; a real excess of talent; foreign stars; a rabid fan base; an expiring contract for Trade Machine purposes (Raef LaFrentz, everybody!); Rookie of the Year dark horse and potential NBA heartthrob Rudy Fernandez (a cross between Paul Westphal and Antonio Banderas); a superb group of beat writers; multiple players who translate well to YouTube clips; a shrewdly run front office that spends its riches correctly (unlike everyone else); the whole "Will a Western rival pick up Darius Miles for 10 games just to screw their 2009 cap space?" subplot; a top three that ranks off the charts on the Good Guy Scale and may have broken the all-time record for a professional sports team (Oden, Roy and Aldridge); the smart decision to split the 10-man rotation into two separate units and keep it that way (love it); the increasing probability of a Roy-Fernandez-Outlaw-Aldridge-Oden crunch-time lineup (really love it); the ongoing "Will Oden ever be the guy we thought he would be?" and "Isn't it a bad sign that a 20 year-old franchise center looks and runs like he's 37?" debates; even the whole Duke/Rocky, "When Apollo died, a part of me died, too, but now you're the one" dynamic with the disenfranchised Sonics fans who might jump to their side.



There's just a lot going on with the 2009 Blazers. They were made for blogs and message boards and YouTube and losers like me who watch the NBA every night and everything else. Call 'em the Portland Internets. And by the way, when I made my wish list for "Teams I Absolutely Have to See" for my Clippers games this year, the list shook out like this: Celtics, Lakers, Blazers, Cavs, Hornets, Heat, Suns, Knicks, Pistons, Rockets, Durant's Future Former Team. Believe me, I can enjoy just about any NBA game in good seats. But those are the 11 teams I have to see in person at least once ... and Portland ranked third on the list. What a turnaround. Let's hope this paragraph wasn't the moment when it peaked.

[Findog]

From the same article:


Random Miami note: I watched Game 3 of the 2006 Finals on NBA TV earlier this month, which features at least eight incomprehensibly bad calls or no-calls and should always be mentioned on the short list of NBA playoff games with the fishiest officiating. I look at the Donaghy Saga as a good thing now; there's just no way that anything like "Game 3 of the 2006 Finals" will ever happen again. You will never see three referees collectively decide either consciously or subconsciously, "We're giving every borderline call to Team X and that's that." Anyway, I blocked this out of my mind, but seriously, how bad was Miami's "every fan wears white" gimmick for those games? They looked like they should have been rooting for Zac Efron's team in "High School Musical 3." What an appalling Finals in every respect. Maybe the league's worst moment since the Kermit Washington punch. And yet I digress.

Damn, that's strong

Helps soften the blow from this, with which I agree:


2. The window will officially close on Dallas and Phoenix as title contenders

Remember how excited we were when the NBA briefly shed the "No Balls Association" tag this past February and Dallas (Jason Kidd) and Phoenix (Shaq) swung for the fences? Well, it didn't work -- the Kidd gamble was doomed from the start, and the Shaq gamble was nullified when Phoenix suffered a colossal Stomach Punch loss in Game 1 of the Spurs series (and by the way, the Suns choked that game away, so I'm not absolving them). If this were "Entourage," the '09 Mavs and Suns would be a reeling Vincent Chase right after "Medellin" bombed, only they don't have a super-agent like Ari to save them. Stick a fork in them. And yes, I picked that analogy only because it combined Marc Stein's favorite show with his two favorite NBA teams.

(The good news: We haven't lost either team from the "wannabe contender" group just yet, and they still have a chance to win 45-50 games. Also, we get another elite year of Steve Nash and Dirk Nowitzki; a potential career year from Amare Stoudemire; 15-20 box scores from opposing point guards against Jason Kidd that will resemble some of Oscar Robertson's best work; a full season of Josh Howard jokes; two Suns with WNBA hairdos; tons of bitterness from the Phoenix fan base toward Robert Sarver, not just for blowing their 2004-08 window by being cheap but for indefensibly selling the Rudy Fernandez pick in 2007; and Shaq officially shifting into Kareem-in-1989/Ewing-in-2000 full-scale calcification mode.)

[pauls931]

Seems like no one talks about NO. Are they going to ignore them again this year til the playoffs? Ya poor Phoenix, their chance was blown when Stoudamire and Diaw left the bench. Still looking forwards to seeing them this year though with their new point guard, the foul magnet, and mr hustle.