Portland Blazers 91, Atlanta Hawks 97: Blazers Fall Short with Poor Effort

BOX SCORE

After so many thrilling, and ultimately positive endings to games against the Atlanta Hawks, Joe Johnson got revenge with a 97 to 91 victory over the Blazers in Portland tonight.

Confidence seems to be down, already two losses at home, and the team with such high expectations is really struggling to keep it together here early in the season.

Once again it's the same old story. In the second half the Hawks got more than their fair share of easy buckets thanks to Portland not getting back on defense. Transition D was a killer. The Hawks are a young athletic team, why wouldn't they take advantage of our poor efforts in transition?

I'm so fed up with our struggles on offense too. All I ever see are jump shots. Travis forcing it and Blake ice cold from the field. At one point in the game, as I watched Andre Miller dribble around at the top of the key, I saw absolutely no one cutting or looking for the ball. The Blazers don't look smooth at all right now.

The good news in this game? We had control at times. Our bigs, when they weren't in foul trouble, did a quality job defensively. Andre Miller also did what I thought he would, got the team involved with 11 assists. Best of all, LaMarcus Aldridge played through the pain in his knee and put up 20 points and a season high 14 rebounds. Hopefully those things can be carried over to the Spurs game on Friday.

I think Nate McMillan had a good point in his postgame news conference:

"Our level of play [has] got to go up to win. We're not playing as hard as we need to, to win games."

Is that all it is? Are the Blazers just not playing hard enough? Sometimes I wonder. So often we're firing on all cylinders and scoring in bunches, then all the sudden we're lethargic and the offense is stale.

I'm not a coach, and I don't claim to be one, but it's time to shake things up. Stop with all the meandering and put Andre Miller in as the starter. Miller is the type of point guard that can get us out of a rut.

His ability to get into the lane AND see Greg or LaMarcus for open, easy looks is so important. If Steve Blake has an off shooting night he becomes totally irrelevant. Andre Miller must play at least thirty minutes per game.

I'm pissed. I'm going to bed and I'm taking my anger out on the basketball court in the morning.