Tonight, the Blazers lost a road game at the Houston Rockets 98-94. This was a huge game because the Rockets were only a half game behind Portland in the playoff hunt. The Blazers also had the opportunity to win the second of the three games they play against Houston this year potentially giving them a tiebreaker if the teams ended the season with the same record. The Blazers lost the first two quarters and won the second two - but still came up short.
Watching the game and looking at the box score after the game, there is one stat that jumps out in my mind. No, it's not that the blazers missed a bunch of open shots tonight that they normally make (in the end they shot 0.1% better than the rockets from the field). It's the +/-. I know the +/- can be a deceiving statistic. But tonight, I think it was very telling. Batum was a +22 and Aldridge a +16. You have to ask yourself, how did they lost a game where two of their better defenders and starters were +22 and +16? Does this help: Battier was a -5 and Yao was -3. In fact the only Rocket starter who was a plus tonight was Artest at a whopping +1.
Here's what happened. Soon after Aldridge picked up his second foul, Nate took him and Batum out of the game for Channing and Outlaw. At this point they had been playing well and held a 7 point lead in the first quarter. Then everything went down hill for the rest of the half. To try to dig themselves out of the hole they started to create, Nate played Rudy with Travis for some extended minutes. In 15 minutes of play, Rudy was a -19. Seriously, that's terrible. You would think he would have to have been shooting at the wrong basket to pull that off.
What did Nate do wrong? I contend that when the Blazers are on the road Nate far too often let's the team dig holes in the first half without calling a timeout and changing the lineup and strategy to disrupt the other team's game. I was yelling at my TV (so loud that my throat now hurts) to put Batum back in the game. He was the key to disrupting their offensive flow. Why does this matter? When Batum disrupts their flow, they shoot jump shots that the blazers rebound and run out ahead of Yao and their D to get easy looks. Scoring easily then lets the Blazers get back and set their D again. Batum played such effective team D that tonight he was a +22 in 27 minutes in a loss. That's a serious head scratcher. I think when the coaches go back and look at the tape from this game, they'll realize that one of their keys from here on out is going to be knowing when to use Batum for D and when they can go with Outlaw for offense. My personal opinion is they should look to play outlaw more with Batum and for Batum to start upping his average minutes per game.
Tomorrow night the Blazers play in the second of a back-to-back against San Antonio who played on the road and won tonight at Dallas. Duncan and Ginobili were both inactive tonight; but, Parker played great to get them the win. We probably won't know until near game time if Duncan will be playing. The one good thing going for the Blazers is that they are better than the average NBA team in playing back-to-back games. Hopefully, that can carry them to a win over the current number two seed in the west. Go Blazers!
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