Blazers Crusie to A Win Over Minnesota In Front of A Sold Out Crowd

Sunday night, the Blazers met up with the Minnesota Timberwolves at the Rose Quarter. Prior to this meeting, the Blazers had won eight consecutive matches against the Timberwolves, all at home. Sunday's sell out crowd of 20,000+ was the Blazer's 76th consecutive sell-out including the playoffs. All these aspects on top of Nate McMillan's new starting line up experiment and the Blazers' recent win against the San Antonio Spurs made for an exciting and heavily anticipated game.

Let's take a look at Sunday's starting five:

Brandon Roy
Steve Blake
Andre Miller
LaMarcus Aldridge
Greg Oden

Once again, McMillan went for the three guard line-up giving Andre Miller his second starting position for the Blazers' this season and can we say, good call Nate, gooood call! Miller was all over the floor, pushing the ball, penetrating and creating space for our big guys in the center. Not to mention looking ahead and finding LMA for an amazing dunk! Andre is definitely working hard for his starting position and was the Blazers' highest scorer of the night with 21 points. He also had 3 assists and 4 rebounds. Miller shot 9 of 14 from the field and 2 of 3 from the line. LaMarcus Aldridge also had a spectacular night with 19 points, 3 assists and 10 rebounds. If LMA keeps playing at this level, we'll have another all-star in no time! He shot 5 of 11 from the field and a SPECTACULAR 9 of 9 from the line! 100% free-throws! Someone learned their lesson after missing possible game winning free-throws against Denver. Travis Outlaw was great coming off the bench last night with 19 points! He shot 5 of
9 from the field and just like his good friend LMA, 100%, 6 of 6 at the free throw line. Jerryd Bayless AKA J Bay Bay AKA El Diablo (shout out to Wheels and Tone on 95.5 the Game for trying desperately to find a nickname for JBay.) had a good night with 12 points 4 assists and 1 rebound. Particularly notable though is (I imagine you're wondering, 'where is Brandon Roy's 30 points?' 'Why has she not mentioned Brandon Roy yet?') well, Brandon Roy scored a whopping 2 points last night. I know you're hyperventilating and scrambling to change your fantasy line-up but be sure to take into consideration that along with those 2 points, Brandon Roy had 7 assists and 6 rebounds. I think we saw a wise and knowledgeable B Roy last night. He was moving the ball around and creating opportunities for his teammates. It shows incredible maturity to care more about winning with your team than winning with yourself. I'm pretty sure this will be the last 2 point game for B Roy though. Also, rookie, Dante Cunningham clocked in his first minutes in an official NBA season game and was able to come away with 6 points!
(Box Score Taken from Blazers' Official Site)

In case you weren't paying attention there, EVERY Blazer that played last night scored and all but one player *cough Dante Cunningham cough* tallied an assist. That's absolutely amazing and the exact type of basketball we need to be playing to go as far as possible in the post season. I think we can all breathe a little easier now. The guys are still working on meshing together but they're starting to play some great basketball and hopefully will just keep getting better.

 This game was incredibly fun for me! I was able to go with a small group of some of my dearest friends, including my dear friend Valerie who, if you can believe it, is from Portland and has NEVER been to a single Blazer game! She got the best of both worlds with this game seeing as how we sat at the very back of the Rose Garden against the wall in the 300 level and in my season ticket seats down in the lower level. She also got to witness a win for her first game which is always nice. Here's some pictures I was able to snap at the game:

 

 

Look at Dante Cunningham in the top left corner of this next pic, he's definitely feelin' that that night was a good night :-)

 

The Blazers next play the Memphis Grizzlies on Tuesday in Memphis. This marks the first game on a five game road trip. Some definite keys to success are keeping turnovers to a minimum and maximize our transition defense. When teams get a fast break and push the ball, we've been having trouble getting back and getting a stop. We need to keep up the ball movement and keep our free-throw percentage high! Oh and more than 2 points B Roy, pretty please!


OT: I was able to snag a pair of the amazingly beautiful Portland Trail Blazer Addidas! I got them through a wonderful site www.Shoebacca.com! This is not a paid advertisement or anything, but I know how weary we can be of buying this from the internet and this site was great and one of the few that actually carried the shoes! So, if you were looking for a pair as of now they carry sizes 7 and 7.5 in mens.


(Pictures: Associated Press and myself)