(Photo by Jonathan Ferrey/Getty Images)
I was looking for the right word to describe the first Blazer playoff game in six years. Destruction? Annihilation? Crushing? Ah, wait...I have it. Humiliation.
Make no mistake, Houston came out and pummeled the Blazers beyond all recognition. They started with a punch in the mouth. When Portland got up Houston got serious.
They started the renewed assault with a kick in the groin followed by another punch in the mouth and then, as the Blazers lay there bleeding, they dropped a few elbows and followed those up with a piledriver that put the Blazers through the floor.
They then started to walk away before returning to kick the prone body once more for just one measure.
They started the renewed assault with a kick in the groin followed by another punch in the mouth and then, as the Blazers lay there bleeding, they dropped a few elbows and followed those up with a piledriver that put the Blazers through the floor.
They then started to walk away before returning to kick the prone body once more for just one measure.
The Blazers, for the first time since the first game of the season when they Lakers humiliated them in similar fashion, looked young, inexperienced, and unprepared. They also looked like a team that felt they had accomplished all their goals just by making the playoffs.
The Rockets, by contrast, for the first time in recent playoff memory, looked like a team that not only wanted to make the playoffs, they wanted to get out of the first round.
It all started on the first Blazer possession. LaMarcus Aldridge posted up Luis Scola on his strong side, the low left block. This allows him to either spin baseline or come across the lane with a sweeping hook that is pretty tough to defend.
Unless, of course, you are 7'6", come off your man and swat it away as Yao Ming did. He executed a shot block so spectacular and intimidating it took Aldridge out of the game for the rest of the half and part of the third quarter. By the time Aldridge recovered, it was too late as the game was out of reach.
It was not only Aldridge who struggled, though. Early on it looked like Nicolas Batum might be a force. He ball-faked on the perimeter, drove baseline and hammered home a dunk. That opened things up. Brandon Roy started driving aggressively to the hoop and scoring regularly.
Unfortunately, that would be the last points for Batum, no other Blazer was scoring, and Houston started collapsing on Roy every trip inside and he stopped shooting.
Meanwhile, Houston went inside to Ming early and often and he delivered. Barring injury or a precipitous fall-off in talent level, Ming will be in the Hall of Fame some day and in this game it looked like that day should be now.
His 9-for-9 shooting in the game (all in the first half) was more than enough to put the Blazers in a hole too deep to ever climb out of.
His 9-for-9 shooting in the game (all in the first half) was more than enough to put the Blazers in a hole too deep to ever climb out of.
The good news is there are perhaps two Blazers who did not have the worst games they will have in the entire series. Those two were Greg Oden and Brandon Roy, though Roy is unlikely to play that poorly either.
Oden did what you are supposed to do against shot blockers. He used ball fakes to get them in the air and scored virtually at will. Roy also scored well. But they were nowhere near enough in light of the team approach taken by the Rockets.
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