Dec 7 AT Toronto

Portland struggled with the Knicks and the Wiz. Toronto, with Bosh, Calderon, and Oneal are a much better team. Add to that a 10:00 a.m. start for the Blazers, the fact it is the final game of a long road trip and whether or not there is any hangover affect from the Celtics game and this has 'tough' written all over it. This will be almost as much of a mental test as the Boston game but for different reasons.

This is the make-or-break game in terms of whether this is a good road trip or not. The Knicks and the Wizards were games you were supposed to win no matter where the game was played. Detroit was a nice win but they are struggling big time since AI came over. (under .500) No one expected a win at Boston but if you lose at Toronto, outside of the gimme games against the inept, Portland would be 1-2 with that win over a 'not-as-good-as-they-used-to-be' Pistons team and they would have played well in only 1 of the 5 games. 4-1 would be nice.

lol :) TBPup I woke up with visions of a good old fashioned Canadian buttkicking, but you and a cup of french roast have brought me back to reality.

I feel the loser mentality inside myself telling me that 3-2 is still a good trip and that only good teams have a winning record on the road. But that's a load of hooey. What you say about this being the game that makes or breaks the road trip is true. If we fall apart in Toronto we return home with our tails between our legs. It's as simple as that.

We shouldn't have struggled with the Knicks or the Wizards in the way that we did. Nevertheless the Raptors are beatable, and they haven't been playing all that well either. I guess this will be a chance for us to see how fragile this team is emotionally, and whether or not they are able to put their big boy pants on today and put their feet on the throats of the Raptors the way the Celtics did to them on Friday night. If they fall apart today I think we need to take a real good look at why and see it as a sign that some changes need to be made if we want to be contenders rather than pretenders.

1-7 shooting. 11-3, not a very good start. Jacking up a lot of outside shots.

Here comes Webster.

Whew!.... ended the half 23-10 run. Sacked up and caught up with Toronto. I'd love to have a bug in the locker room and hear what Nate has to say to the team.

Nice 3 by Blake to win it, 4-1 for the road trip is amazing.

Congrats boys!

It's still the seventh...!

Box Score:

Didn't watch, but I see Webster got 5 minutes of PT? and went 0/1

Hmm looks like Nate has faith in Martell, playing him in his first game back. Good to see

lol :) TBPup I woke up with visions of a good old fashioned Canadian buttkicking, but you and a cup of french roast have brought me back to reality.

UCTrout...you should have brought your coffee on over. D69 and I had a serious breakfast. Oversize stuffed omelettes, homestyle herb potatoes, bacon, juice...mmmm, mmmm.

I'm glad they won but after getting a 10 point lead, in their final 16 posessions, they jacked up 9 outside jumpers, had one turnover and a couple of 1-on-3 drives to the hoop....fortunate to be playing the Raptors.

TBpup wrote:

lol :) TBPup I woke up with visions of a good old fashioned Canadian buttkicking, but you and a cup of french roast have brought me back to reality.

UCTrout...you should have brought your coffee on over. D69 and I had a serious breakfast. Oversize stuffed omelettes, homestyle herb potatoes, bacon, juice...mmmm, mmmm.

I'm glad they won but after getting a 10 point lead, in their final 16 posessions, they jacked up 9 outside jumpers, had one turnover and a couple of 1-on-3 drives to the hoop....fortunate to be playing the Raptors.

That sounds good. Hope you guys had a great time.

CutTheCheck wrote:Didn't watch, but I see Webster got 5 minutes of PT? and went 0/1

I guess Martell was limping on that foot before he came out and pulled his shoe off and was pointing to it while talking to trainer Jensen.
What's interesting about all that was the interview they did with him before the game where he said he wasn't expecting to play this trip (despite what we'd been hearing) and that Nate came up to him before this game and asked him if he knew the plays. After Webster said 'Yeah', Nate said 'Good, I'm thinking I'll play you today'.
So it seems, although Web was cleared to play, he might of been toeing that line closer than we thought. Hopefully it was just soreness from not running full-speed lately.

As for the game.. Thank Gawd we pulled that out. What pup and trout said was true - if we'd of let this one slip by us I think it would of soured the whole trip even further and we could be reminiscing of the days when the Blazers were up and down headcases. Of course those were the days when we used to lose most of the close ones. Today we're, what, 7 and 0 in games decided by 5 pts or less? That's so much better for our rides down Ulcer Gulch.

Anyhow, I'm just really, really glad we won today. We all needed that after Friday - the team, the fans, the city.

By the way, CTC - I think you need to bench your profile picture like Nate banished Frye today (amen - still really pissed at him ).

PS: The vid of the game (and a surprise) should be up here any minute.

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DMKPDX wrote:

PS: The vid of the game (and a surprise) should be up here any minute.

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Sweet. We love those videos.

and we love surprises