Well, to be fair, my bitching was based in an anti-bitching perspective, at least regarding Nate and Roy. So ignorant.
It's tough for me to stay up to 1:30am to watch a game on a workday, much less post afterward. I'll try to make it less dead now!
Where was I bitching about Matthews and Miller? I started a thread about Matthews, and Miller has been playing great.
it is troubling miller cant get past the 1st round and, wes is playing horrible and needs to take blame in the losses. it is not troubling that nate cant win in the playoffs and roy doesnt need to take blame in the losses got it
Only one man can unify the bitches and anti-bitches. Only one man towers above the rest to catch the lightning bolts from both camps. Here I stand in my self-declared demilitarized zone, the glue of the board. All you bitches and anti-bitches, listen up! Henceforth PapaG carries a letter bearing my wax seal of approval to safely traverse between the two warring lands. He wears the ring containing the covenant, and in case he loses that, he wears his magic ruby red slippers. (Got free McDonald's coffee a half-hour ago. Streaming through my veins right now.)
Nate's won in the playoffs, both as a player and a coach. Roy is a secondary player at this point, and the many threads and posts blaming him for a loss in a game that he played 8 minutes, with zero in the fourth, seemed stupid to me. Miller is the 2nd-most important Blazer player in this series after LMA. Let's hope he ends his 'streak'.
As happy I am about last night's game, I still see danger signs that the series really hasn't shifted much: it's just that the Blazers made shots that they were missing in Dallas, and vise versa. The reffing was a little more even, but not much. Dallas could have taken game three if a couple of balls had bounced the other way, so I don't feel like the Blazers "SEIZED COMMAND OF THE SERIES" in any way. If the Blazers had blown out the Mavs by 25, I might think that. But the only team that's been run off the floor in this series so far is the Blazers at the end of game two. I still haven't seen the Blazers grab Dallas by the throat at any time in the series, look them in the eye, and scream WE ARE WINNING THIS SERIES NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO. I believe that elite teams do that. That's what Chicago did to Indiana and Miami did to Philly last night. If the Blazers take control of Game 4 and not give Dallas any ideas of winning that game, then I'll believe that they've turned the corner and are ready to beat Dallas in Dallas. But until then, I still give the Blazers slim odds to win the series.
The Blazers aren't an elite team. Hopefully that makes all of this easier to watch without being upset. Thankfully, neither is Dallas and everything you said about Portland not "seizing command" can be said about Dallas, too. It's a match-up of two good, non-elite teams. One of them will win and since they're pretty evenly matched, it will be close and almost random which team does. The one that gets the most "good bounces."
In a series where neither team is exerting dominance, I take solace in knowing we weathered some good hits from Dallas last night and still won. This is a slugfest series, and will probably go to 7 games.
