Thursday, February 12th @ Golden State. Please prove this to me otherwise. I've taken into account our losses against good (or playoff teams) at home and on the road. I can't look back on any of those and say we absolutely should have won any one of those games. So, yeah, it takes me clear back to that February 12th game.
Monday night vs. Philly..that squad is weak and has no inside game....2nd worst loss of the year behind the Clip show @ home.
The lakers fell to the Bobcats at home too, sometimes crazy shit happens. There is no reason we should have lost at home to an eastern team not from boston, cleveland, or orlando. The rest of that conference is bunk.
Atlanta begs to differ. The Hawks are actually somewhat decent. After the 3 you mentioned and Atlanta, I agree
Perhaps, if that's the way you feel. I just see Philly as a decent playoff team..and came in playing inspired basketball. I certainly didn't look at that game as one the Blazers absolutely should have win. The whole reason I brought all this up is, there are more than a few people claiming that the Blazers have not been playing up to par. So, I went back and looked at the schedule to see if there were games the Blazers had lost that they could have been criticized for losing. I had to go back that far.
Forget about overall records, it's all about matchups. Golden State, Philly, Atlanta, and even OKC all have a couple of things in common that are absolutely kryptonite to this team: They are full of physical, slashing forwards and/or guards who thrive on the break and rely on dribble penetration. Once guys like Nicolas (and Jerryd?) get a little more experienced and stronger and/or we add some more athletic, physical defenders on the perimeter and wing then these kinds of teams are going to continue to be a problem. Some of these issues will be ameliorated as team defensive principles improve in the course of time, but until then expect us to struggle at times against these kinds of teams. For what it's worth almost every team outside of the true contenders has a matchup problem or two around the league; it's just the way it is.
