The Twolves barely lost to the Lakers earlier this week. The Rockets whupt' up on the Cavs with basically the same team we played. The Mavs barely beat the Thunder tonight, who was without Kevin Durant for all but 8 minutes of the game. I just saved a lot of money by switching to Geico and I didn't just knock up some girl I fool around with. All in all, I think this is all a good thing.
Something else overlooked in all of our handwringing over the Blazers' losses to the Spurs and Rockets: over the past 10 games, only the Jazz and Rockets have made gains on the competition. Everybody else went 6-4 (except the Lakers who improved their hold on the top spot). While it's not good that the Rockets passed the Blazers and the Jazz gained on them, the Hornets, Mavs, and Suns all remain the same distance behind and the Nuggets did nothing to improve their lead in the NW division.
That wasn't lost. Despite all the losing by Portland, I think we've all been well aware of this. "Portland may be losing, but julius is being responsible/not getting any." That's been pointed out many times. Feel better, I hope?
It's not about losing two games. It's about the Blazers getting schooled by good West teams on the road this season (And no I don't count the Hornets w/o Chris Paul). The Houston and Spurs games were tests of our progress and we failed both miserably. This team hasn't made the strides it needs to on defense compared to last season. We see the same bad perimeter defense and constant mismatches off of the pick-and-roll.