2011 NBA Playoffs: Brandon Roy's Game 3 Success a Mirage

In "127 Hours," James Franco plays Aron Ralston, an enthusiastic young man who loves to hike and mountain bike. His infectious energy and love for life is crushed when he is accidentally trapped underneath a boulder at the bottom of a narrow canyon.

For the majority of the film, the audience watches as Franco's character comes to grips with his situation and with his own mortality. Ralston screams in frustration, trapped by his body and unwilling to accept that his life will never be the same ever again.

In this sense, Ralston is like Portland Trail Blazers guard Brandon Roy.

While down 2-0 in Portland's first-round series against Dallas, Roy decided to throw a temper tantrum of epic proportions, claiming that he was fighting back tears on the bench after being denied playing time down the stretch of Game 2.

At the worst possible time, Roy chose to make his issues and emotional well-being the paramount item of discussion in the media, distracting his team at a time when the Trail Blazers should have been focusing on getting back in the series. His emotional outbursts did not restore his meniscus or improve his physical abilities in any way, but that did not stop him from loudly complaining.

Clearly, Roy didn't see “127 hours.”

Aron Ralston was able to survive his ordeal under the boulder because he came to terms with the fact that his body would never be the same. He decided that living in some capacity, even if it wasn't what he was used to, was better than not living at all.

Conversely, Roy seems content to pretend that the boulder doesn't exist and that his knees are fine. His Game 3 performance against Dallas (6/10 shooting for 16 points) would be more impressive if it didn't follow his terrible shooting earlier in the series (1/8, 2 points in Games 1 and 2 combined).

Blazer fans excited by Brandon's Game-3 exploits should remember that after his coaches shut down Roy for months to “rest” earlier this season, he returned and showed flashes of his former brilliance in a February game against Denver, before again going into a prolonged slump.

In other words, Brandon's success on Thursday will only encourage him to keep shooting and to believe that he can play that well on a regular basis, when his previous year's play suggests otherwise, much to the detriment of Portland's chances for advancing over Dallas.

Roy has a choice to make in the following weeks and months—he can continue screaming in the canyons about why a man with no knees deserves more playing time, or he can accept that his body is permanently scarred and move on accordingly.

For the sake of the Portland Trail Blazers' future, I hope he chooses the latter.