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You gotta have your head examined if you felt dumbfounded and angry about the Blazers getting convincingly thunked at Staples Center again (doing a doubleheader with the Blazers' next opponent--Detroit beating the Clippers earlier in the day). With Brandon Roy, they got smoked the first night of the season, and while they're by no means the same squad they might not even be as good as that night without him. So I could have written that "Blazers lose to Lakers as Bryant leads fourth quarter blowout" and been right 90% of the time, and it wouldn't have been that hard a prediction. I might have said that that L*kers just buried them in shots and ran past 100 as nobody was contested. Inside the Blazers had serious foul trouble and the L*kers--particularly Kobe--went to the line a zillion times. And I'd have been right in several ways. But in other ways, for at least the opening third of this game, the Blazers were well within their capacity to put up a sizable lead beyond the ones they had. And well into the third quarter, while they were shaky and going through a cold stretch they could have stayed easily competitive. After that it fell apart like an Indian scooter. (Trust me, they're the K Cars of scooters, with shadier parts places). So it's instructive to see where the weaknesses remain--Rudy has lost his shot and doesn't know where in the world it has gone, Travis has it sometimes, doesn't at others, and doesn't rightly seem to care which it is on any given night for all it will change his game...and he'll throw in the standing around and not getting out on D for free. Bayless is like Sergio two years ago, Blake can pass and drive but he can't calm the team. Etc. etc. etc. But let's focus instead on another game where but for simply average rather than crushingly poor shooting, especially from distance, the Blazers played an elite team awfully tough. For much of the first half I saw Kobe having to work a little, and not liking it. Some of the other players started bitching as well. Have you noticed that the top teams all start to whine when stuff doesn't go right for them in the first half, and by the second half the stuff they were complaining about seems to go away? They played a really kick-ass first quarter. Let's look at that instead. {play by play analysis, below}
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