Blazers vs Kings – Hot Live Blog Action

Live from the Rose Garden as it’s the most unimportant important NBA game in recent memory–the Portland Trail Blazers versus the Sacramento Kings.

Granted, pre-season basketball is not as essential as the Presidential debates, or a rerun of According to Jim (on in 30 minutes on KPDX! Synopsis: It’s Cheryl and Jim’s anniversary, and one of them forgot, which prompts a show full of flashbacks. Oh the hilarity. I love flashback episodes. Must of been a writer’s strike.), but tonight might be the exception. It’s the unofficial debut of the brand new Blazers you have heard so much about: Jamaal Tatum, Ike Diogu, and Luke Jackson! Yay! Rise with us!!

Oh, and some guys named Greg Oden, Rudy Fernandez, and Jerryd Bayless are going to play as well. Hot damn.

It’s liberal (Oden) vs. conservative (Spencer Hawes), it’s meaningless pre-season basketball, happening right now…

Pre-Game:
Oden is supposed to play for 15 minutes, Brandon Roy will get his 20 minutes, while Sergio Rodriguez is supposed to start for an injured Steve Blake. Tonight also marks the debut of Bayless leading from the point guard position, Travis Outlaw and Fernandez splitting time on the second unit, and Blaze the Trail Car debuting a new t-shirt gun (rumored to have been illegally purchased on the Ukrainian black market).

OMG! They just introduced Oden. I am slightly aroused.

FIRST QUARTER:
11:26 – Oden gets a defensive three seconds technical foul. Nice start.

10:00 – Mark that shit down. Oden with a monster dunk while getting fouled. He clanks the free throw. 5-2 Kings.

8:18 – The Blazers haven’t exactly flexed their defensive muscle so far. Every Sacramento drive has ended up with a layup, or a missed layup. 8-7 Kings.

7:20 – Oden’s jumpshot is U-G-L-Y, but he picked up his own miss and was hacked to death by the meaty paws of Hawes (gosh, that rhymes) before he could dunk again. Bonus–he doesn’t look winded. Yet. 11-9 Kings.

6:21 – Roy looks to be in mid-season form as he drains another shot with a defender’s hand in his grill. Not bad for a guy who recently was under the knife and is not supposed to be playing tonight. 15-12 Kings.

5:46 – God, I am exhausted. I clearly am not in mid-season blogging shape. My fingers are killing me, and clearly (look at these jokes, they are terrible) this is not my best work. Oh, Oden is out, the Vanilla Gorilla is in, and Bayless too.

4:11 – Bayless travels and Rudy enters the game, getting a significantly louder ovation than Oden. 15-12 Kings.

3:03 – Jerry D. Bayless (it’s just easier to spell) knocks back a three from the corner. Rudy has yet to score, but he did knock Jason Thompson to the floor. See? All European players aren’t soft. Just most of them are. 19-17 Sacramento.

2:17 – We like Ike! Well, at least McMillen does. He’s put in Diogu. Blazers offensive still looks like it’s been gathering dust all Summer long. 22-18 Sacramento.

0:42 – Rudy just had the pass of his NBA career (all 6 minutes of it), hitting Outlaw through a sea of traffic while jumping in mid-air. Outlaw then got blocked on his dunk attempt. Ouch. 31-21 Kings.

SECOND QUARTER:
10:51 – Rudy with a gorgeous layup high off the glass. His first points are pretty impressive, here’s hoping there are a lot of those to come. 33-25 Kings.

8:50 – Sergio passes up an open Oden, an open Rudy, an open Outlaw, and instead drives to the basketball and gets stripped of the ball. Somewhere in Indiana Jarrett Jack is smiling. 35-28 Sacramento.

8:25 – Oden dunks. I assume that is a sentence I will be typing a lot of in the future. Mikki Moore also dunks, but no one cares about that. 38-30 Kings.

5:43 – Oden dunks. Again. I was a little weary of how he’d score double digits in the NBA, but now it’s pretty clear. He is going to do that one dunk after another after another. It reminds me of a young, skinnier, Shaq. 43-35 Kings.

3:12 – Oh, hello Martell. The freshly buzzed (hair, not, well, you know…) Webster hits a three and follows it with a fastbreak dunk. Oden looks winded and doesn’t cross mid-court on the fastbreak. 45-42 Sacramento.

0:49 – Sergio tries something other than grinding the offense to a halt, and instead he has scored their last 8 points in a row. Blazers now on top. 51-48 Portland.

0:01 – LaMarcus hits a long jumper at the buzzer. It’s a nice end to a lopsided, but still promising, first half. 53-50 Blazers.

THIRD QUARTER:
11:29 – It takes 31 seconds for Oden to dunk. When he is not wheezing he looks damn quick, especially under the basket. 55-50 Portland.

9:06 – Just to keep things fresh, Oden doesn’t dunk it. Instead he dishes to Roy for a three-pointer. On the other end of the court, the big man from Ohio hacks Sheldon Williams (Who looks like a vampire from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Woah, forehead wrinkles.) for his third foul. He might be done for the night. Oden, not the vampire, that is. 61-53 Portland.

5:40 – Bayless has had an impressive quarter so far. He’s noticeably quicker than anyone else on the floor and while it hasn’t lead to too many assists, his ability to deposit the ball in the hands of his teammates while on the run seems NBA-ready. Meanwhile, LaMarcus gets bandaged up for a small cut. He then gets a toy from the treasure chest for being such a big boy and not crying while getting his band-aid. 68-57 Blazers.

5:00 – Oh shit. Rudy with a ridiculous alley-oop dunk. If that’s not on SportsCenter tomorrow morning, there is no God. 72-57 Portland pulls away as Gary Glitter blares from the speakers.

4:18 – Rudy again. This time getting the crowd into it with a comical between the legs pass to Aldridge for the dunk. Again, that might make the national feeds. That was straight out of AndOne. The crowd now chants “RUDY! RUDY! RUDY!” much like that one movie about the hobbit who played football for Notre Dame. 74-57 PDX.

3:14 – Wow! Again, Rudy dazzles with a pass that is straight up Rucker Park street ball style. This game seems way too easy for him right now. 78-59 Portland.

1:43 – OH DEAR GOD! Rudy, once again. Mid-air taking a alley-oop pass, skipping the dunk, and then hitting the reverse layup. All in one fluid motion. The crowd here is losing it in a way they shouldn’t be for a pre-season game. He has six points, all of which have been nothing short of spectacular. Next up, he gets the trampoline and dunks from the rafters, because I’m not sure what else there is for him to do. 81-61 Blazers.

FOURTH QUARTER:
10:08 – Huh, look at that that: Oden returns to the game. I didn’t think I’d see him with the Blazers up 25, but I guess it’s time to stop babying him. He then swats Hawes at the rim (Democrats 1. Republicans 0.) in dramatic fashion. 88-63 Portland.

8:05 – Oden makes a funny little shot that is not a dunk. Huh. According to my rule book, it’s called a “jump shot.” Huh, whatever that is. I doubt we’ll ever see him make one of those again. 92-63 Blazers.

7:08 – It should be noted that Sacramento is missing Kevin Martin and Brad Miller (Bobby Hurley, too), their best two players. So this purple clad team the Blazers are steamrolling–and they are doing just that, Ike Diogu just showboated with an acrobatic layup–is a mere skeleton of itself. And even when they are at full strength, and not in the pre-season, they are not a good team by any stretch of the imagination. While this is fun–oh, Rudy just came back in, time for more highlights–it remains to be seen if the Red & Black can do this against a better team, and when it counts. Sorry for the dose of reality, more dick jokes coming up… 98-65 Blazers.

5:50 – Rudy gets the chalupa points via a reversal dunk. Somewhere a Taco Bell marketing rep has a lightbulb go off over his head. This is getting ridiculous, time to put Ha Seung-Jin in the game. 100-65 Blazers.

3:55 – All that is missing from this Globetrotters exhibition the Blazers are putting on is a whistle solo, Meadowlark Lemon, and a bucket of confetti. Oh and Rudy just hit Webster with a flying alley-oop pass. This is nuts. 104-69 Portland. The Blazers might win by 50.

2:41 – I hope the young Blazers squad realizes that there are no roll-over points, and their extra 35 points do not count towards the next game. Huh? What’s that? They do?? Good news: The Blazers now lead Golden State 35-0 in tomorrow’s game.

2:26 – Rudy exits to a hail of applause. Clyde Drexler could trot in on a unicorn right now and he wouldn’t get any more cheers than Rudy just got. I need to make some Rudy bootleg shirts and sell them outside (Obama style!) the arena, who’s with me? I lost track of the score, let’s just say Portland is up by, oh I don’t know, 400.

0:00 – Kings miss the the elusive 40 point basket–it’s up in the rafters–and the Blazers pull off the lopsided victory. Here’s hoping this is one of many games with the same result.