The MOST Encouraging Sign From Today's Game...

One word. Rebounding.

I grew up watching games on KGW where Steve 'Snapper' Jones would decry his three keys to the game. With near certainty, you could count on third tip to be 'Rebound'. It's that simple. Control the possession of the game. Sure, you should try to minimize turnovers, but if you rebound well then you're giving yourself second chance opportunities and limiting theirs. And it leads to easy opportunities to convert on the fast break.

Last year Portland was the 12th best rebounding team total, and the absolute best on the offensive end.

Tonight we out-rebounded Denver by a margin of 44-36. Against (undersized) Houston it was an even more impressive 51-33.

Want to know who lead the league in rebounding last year? The eventual champion Lakers. How about the runners-up Magic? Third. There are a few outliers (most notably the Pacers at 2nd), but looking at the numbers it's a clear trend that the good teams tend to rank well in rebounding...there's correlation. I assert that this has always been the case, and soon will spend a bit of time attempting to prove this theory (I'll post my findings on my blog).

Certainly there are several things we need to improve upon. Free-throw shooting anyone? It was encouraging to see Rudy step up as well. We should have had an extra couple of seconds on that last play to get a shot off. Regardless, we lost. Time to get over it. So far this season we have a young but VERY promising trend emerging. If we continue to scrap at the boards like we did in this game (Outlaw's 3rd and 4th efforts on the one play come to mind) we'll consistently be in every game to the end. And with our overall talent and closer in Roy, we'll come out on the better end more often than not.

 

We also had only 7 turnovers. We had the shots, we just couldn't make them -- FG or FT.

 

We got a lot of offensive rebounds because our jumpers weren't falling.

 

Good point.

If we get that many more attempts than our opponents, I'm sure we'll find a way to win most of them. Tonight was just one of those nights.

 

The early 90's Blazers did this a lot; shot pretty poorly, but out-rebounded their opponent by 20 or so. It's not pretty, but it works.

 

Both team made the same number of field goals tonight. But the Blazers had a 81 - 61 advantage in attempts at the goal. Atrocious shooting did us in.

 

I take it you're not one of those people that worry about how pretty our games are? Neither am I.

This team should be able to dominate on the glass and take care of the ball and win that way. We have too many good shooters to shoot as poorly as we did tonight on a regular basis.

 

Fouls on the big men were a big reason why this game was lost. If Oden and Przy are getting a foul every 3 minutes, this is going to be a very long and frustrating season.

 

Lets hope the refs don't call some of those "fouls" throughout the year.

 

Pretty is nice, but wins are nicer.

It's telling that we've dominated the boards against a small team and a large team now. Our opponents are getting one shot and one shot only. If we have even a mediocre game from the field, it's in the bag. This is our early-season rust (we've seen three season running now), combined with greatly improved rebounding. And the rebounding is making such a difference that we almost beat Denver while shooting HORRIBLY!

Me? I'm encouraged by that. If we up our percentage to 43%, and continue to rebound at the clip we are now, we'll be a juggernaut.

 

Another encouraging sign: Oden tripled his scoring output tonight!

 

Could not have phrased it better. I'm still extremely positive after this game. Denver basically shot 50 FTs on the road and barely won the game. That won't happen very often.

 

Or maybe if this team made a commitment to establishing scoring in the low post there wouldn't be so many low percentage (relatively speaking) shots thrown up and we wouldn't have to rely on offensive rebounding to save our ass. Just a thought?

 

Our best post up players are Brandon Roy and Andre Miller.

Until LMA wants to bang inside or Greg learns how to be an offensive threat, committing to score inside isn't a reality.

 

You speak the truth. Post play is indeed a weakness of ours. However, we can work around it by rebounding well. I think this is something we can live with in the long run.

 

Do you coach basketball?

 

scoring inside isn't limited to post play. attacking the basket helps as well and generally opens up a lot of easy opportunities for bigs cutting to the basket and free throw opportunities.

 

No... why, am I talking out my ass?

 

That's a very good point rocketeer. Roy and Miller are probably the best at attacking the rim (outside of Bayless).

Having a post player who you can go inside-out with makes spacing the floor a lot easier than depending on your guards to do your inside scoring for you.

 

lol, no, but you appear to see the game like a coach and not a fan, that's why I asked.

I meant it as a compliment, but around here, it's probably a negative!