LA Story

If you missed the Blazers host the Lakers on Friday, you missed out. With Brandon Roy and James Jones back in the lineup, it's obvious that we won't be going into tank mode anytime soon. Sure, the only chance we have at making the playoffs at this point is if we reel off another 13-game winning streak (remember those days?), and considering our schedule, that would be impossible. But the Blazers are out of their mid-season funk, and the whole team is healthy, and the dreary winter is over, and life seems once again tolerable...

Some thoughts:

- The biggest difference in the play of the Blazers was simple: they were making their shots. It's funny how the mere presence of Jones and Roy elevated everybody's confidence and swagger. Steve Blake hit five threes - in the first half! Jarrett Jack didn't step out of bounds with the ball - not even once!

- Speaking of Jarrett Jack, he played his best two games of the season Wednesday, against the Clippers, and Friday. He's making his open shots, he's not turning the ball over, he's making smart dishes to open teammates... what's going on? Could we finally be seeing some consistency, some reliability in his game? Too early to tell, obviously, but wouldn't it be nice if McMillan stopped shuttling him around the lineup and just used him exclusively as the backup shooting guard, a situation where's he's actually contributing to the team in a positive way? When Jack starts, he plays poorly and the Blazers lose. Simple. Therefore, stop putting him in the starting lineup!

- I can't say enough good things about Travis Outlaw. To be honest, I never thought he would become one of my favorite players on the team, and I didn't think we should have signed him over Udoka. Actually, I thought they should have signed both, but my point remains. At this point, he has to be one of the best values in the league. He's got two more years left on his deal at $4 million per, and at that point, knowing Outlaw, he'd be happy to re-up for the only team he's interested in playing for. By the way, at the end of this contract, he will be a 26-year old veteran of 7 NBA seasons.

What's not to like about this year's version of Outlaw? He dives for loose balls, he skies over 7-footers for rebounds, he can hit threes now at a decent clip, and he hits eighteen-footers straight up, fading away, and falling down. He can dunk, he has a cool name, he has a great attitude, he's young, and he does things like this...



- The win over the Lakers should prove to the team that we can beat anybody. We don't really match up well with the Lakers, as we have nobody big enough to really handle Odom and Gasol, we can't grab offensive rebounds, and nobody in the league, let alone our team, can stop Kobe. And we still won by a fair margin, and to be honest, we should have won on Tuesday in LA. It leads me to believe that the reason we've been playing so poorly over the last month is a lack of confidence, focus, and intensity. You can see it in their faces, from as early on as the first quarter: some games, they just don't care. Call it youth, call it a need for maturity, whatever - this team was, and is, a playoff team when it wants to be.

TJH