Last night the Portland Trail Blazers toppled the Toronto Raptors by a score of 109-98. It was the single worst Raptor-related crime since this film. The game marked the return of Hedo Turkoglu, who backed out a free-agent deal with Portland this off-season, signing with Toronto and playing terribly ever since. Oddly enough Turkoglu was booed the entire night, even though his vacancy on the roster lead to Andre Miller’s arrival, Nicolas Batum regaining his role as a starter, and a whole lot of victories for the Blazers.
Portland is currently flirting with the sixth and seventh playoff spots, and have—barring an epic collapse—more or less locked down the eighth seed and a postseason date with the Los Angeles Lakers. More important than all that real basketball crap, is the fact that the re-launched NBA Jam video game franchise is now taking votes for what three Trail Blazers will be in the game. Will it be Roy/Aldridge/Oden? Or will you screw everything up and vote for Camby/Miller/Webster? Wait, where is the Juwan Howard option?
My picks:
Brandon Roy
Nicolas Batum
LaMarcus Aldridge
No offense to G.O. I love ya, neighbor. Just need ya healthy so I don’t want you going to any mocap sessions and hurting yourself. 😉
I am angry at the lack of Joel Pryzbilla as a voting option. Dude started how many games and has how many double-doubles. He should be a marquee player.
I missed last night, but agree it’s pointless to boo Hedo throughout an entire game. Let him have it the first time he touches the ball, then let it go. I don’t know about the suggestion the team is definitively better off without him though. He’d have been playing a different game than he does in Toronto, with a different guard setting him up (seems he might have been a pretty good complement to Bayless. And maybe had a more potent inside presence on the second unit. Though I’ve no idea how Nate would’ve used him.) And I gotta figure Batum was likely to play himself into a prominent role, regardless of how the FA market shook out.