Friday, February 10, 2006

 

Failblazers

When troubled-songwriter/Portland-native Elliot Smith drove a kitchen knife through his own heart in October of 2003, he could not have imagined what an appropriate metaphor his suicide would make for the effort put forth tonight by his hometown basketball team. So shamefully apathetic were the Blazers that the game often felt as if we were playing against five Mike Olowakandi's backed up by seven Mark Blount's, and by God the Celtics took advantage of it, destroying these weak-willed fucks in a good old fashioned steamrolling.

That said, there really isn't much to recount in detail. The Celtics dominated the entire game, demonstrating a fairly crisp passing game that led to a pair of huge nights from Pierce and Wally. The Blazers stood around like morons while the Celtics re-implemented the 3-point line weave that had worked so well earlier in the season at getting players to move without the ball. Zac Randolph, who more and more resembles some kind of mutated man-slug out of an HP Lovecraft story or one of those Orcs in the Lord of the Rings movies, showed why he's the only 18/9 man in the league that absolutely no one else wants on their team. Thought Mark Blount was stealing from team owners? This fuck is minting bills with his own money machine and shoving them up Paul Allen's ass one small denomination at a time.

On the player side of things, Doc kept a short rotation until garbage time, and as such there was no "Pierce goes to the bench for Orien Greene" moment where we see "bad 12 point swing up ahead" written all over it. Ryan Gomes started and proved exactly what many of us have thought all along - he is a solid low post player who should have been getting steady minutes all season. Pierce had a monster shooting game, Raef came alive, and Orien Greene made my head ache. During the last 9 minutes of terribly officiated garbage time we saw new face "what's his name" Jones get some time and prove possibly a more serviceable 15th man than Curtis Borchardt. Gerald Green looked like a precious 19 year old (tossing his headband after bricking two free throws) until he laid down a monster dunk that was Kedrick Brown-ian in its "this guy probably sucks but I still wish he played a lot" factor.

So basically, good game, nice win, but I'll be a lot more impressed if we can do it it against the Magic on Sunday.

Player of the Game - Ryan Gomes. I think it's fair to say that Ryan helped establish an early tone, out hustling the aforementioned sack of shit Zac Randolph and pulling down 7 boards in the first half alone. His numbers were a modest yet fully representative 4/9, and he showed exactly why his smooth, unforced game was chosen over the departed Justin Reed, who often played basketball as if he were the human embodiment of quantum field fluctuations. So anyway, Ryan, from all the sick motherfuckas at St. Mary's Hospital, to all your fly homies at the Seven Angels Theater, and to the keepin-it-reeeeeeal kids on the way to the creepiest TGI Fridays in America (next to the Barnes and Noble Bookstore, yo), Waterbury CT says to its favorite son - "Knowing Doc, You Probably Won't Play Next Game!"

Hamcock - Tony Allen. It's getting embarrassing, he's afraid to shoot and just looks completely fucked in the head. Someone ought to suggest putting Inmate #42 down until his legal fate is determined, because right now he's tittyfucking the team concept every time he's on the floor. Outside of leading the team in audibly screamed "fuck"'s making it onto the FSN broadcast, this dude has done nothing good for the team all year.

Quote of the Night - "Boooo!" RickyDFan. I'm assuming this one, but our great, great, great pal RickyDFan was at the game tonight and promised that he would unload on the hated Wally Szczerbiak from his fourth row seats. Handsome Wally started off 0-3, so I'm assuming RDF was able to vent his spleen most satisfactorily. If he gave the finger to the former Buckets Brigade, all the better.



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