Portland Blazers Triumphant Season Ends in Rout

The Portland Trail Blazers looked dejected. They should have, since they had an opportunity to defeat the Houston Rockets and move on to the second round.

Star guard Brandon Roy was right in saying that “we could have played better this series.” Yet, despite the 16-point loss that ended their season, the Blazers have to feel good about their season, and quickly get that “bad taste in our mouths” out.

The Blazers held a four-point lead, 17-13, after Roy’s mid-range jumper with just over three minutes remaining in the first quarter. This would be the last time Portland was in contention.

The Rockets, behind their home crowd, took off, scoring 21 of the next 25 points to nab a double-digit lead halfway through the second quarter that they would hold for the remainder.

Aside from a few baskets by Travis Outlaw, the Blazers strictly fed Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge on offense. Without balanced scoring from their starters, and significant production from their bench, Portland was doomed.

Roy and Aldridge didn’t have any help, and couldn’t force Game Seven at the Rose Garden by themselves. When Rudy Fernandez, who was wrongly inserted into the starting lineup, and Steve Blake scored just two points apiece, the Blazers chances are zero to none.

Nicolas Batum, the French rookie who started the first four playoff games and 75 of the 82 regular season contests, was tossed aside by head coach Nate McMillan, and only played three minutes. In those three minutes, fittingly, he happened to score more, five points, that Fernandez did in 41 minutes.

Portland inserted Fernandez into the lineup with hopes that he would provide a spark offensively and take the pressure off Roy and Aldridge. He could not, which meant Roy and Aldridge carried the load.

This duo scored 48 of the team’s 76 points, which, even though their performances were valiant, it was not a strategy that was going to get the Blazers far against a defensive-minded Rockets team in their building.

No one aside from Roy and Aldridge made more than two field goals, and no one else scored more than Outlaw’s nine points in the rout. Despite their two wins against Houston, and a distinct possibility of winning the series if they could have forced a Game Seven, this was an experiment.

Portland received a bad matchup, which wasn’t made any better by the officials. Yet, they made the playoffs for the first time in six years. Though they may say otherwise, they accomplished what they set out to do: complete the rebuilding process of a franchise that has transformed from the laughing stock ‘Jail Blazers’ to one with the brightest of all futures.

The end is tough to swallow, considering how much the Blazers grew this year, but I can’t help but look back on their successes during a 54-win season. The playoff credits that rolled after announcers Mike Rice and Mike Barrett bid their farewells was uplifting. The disappointment of the first-round loss was gone.

The credits showed every play of significance: Celtics without Roy">Outlaw’s dunk on Kevin Garnett that clinched the Blazers win without Roy against the Boston Celtics; Jerryd Bayless’s dunk against the New Jersey Nets that put him on the map, even though he rode the bench for a majority of the season; Roy’s game-winning layup against the New York Knicks; His posterization of Cheikh Samb in a win over the Los Angeles Clippers, quite possibly the best dunk of the year; Outlaw’s game-winner against the Detroit Pistons; Aldridge’s dunk over Dallas Mavericks Eric Dampier, albeit in a loss; Blake’s record-tying 14 assists in the first quarter of a win over the Clippers; Roy’s 52-point game against the Phoenix Suns; and, of course, Roy’s 35-footer to beat the Houston Rockets to conclude a back-and-forth thriller.

It was a disappointing end, but a magnificently triumphant season.