Dragic was amazing. He made Lillard look like a fool. But then again so did Frye and the entire Suns team.
its hard to just put a different guy on him all the time, when you make the switch from offense to defense you have to go find the other guy instead of running with your man, if they are pushing the tempo you risk a lot of fast break points. stotts defensive scheme has been working, the only hole is if people hit their long jumpshots they have a good chance of beating us. stotts see's this as ok since it is the lowest percentage shot. the suns seemed to be playing a similair defense on us as we were passing on 3 and taking long 2's. all odds point to a loss at that point unless we beat odds and hit an above average shooting %. dragic is smart, he knows lillard is supposed to fight over every pick, so he fakes taking the pick and goes the other way. lillard anticipates the pick and begins to jump a hair early and gets burned. i dont think this is reason to fire stotts or lillard, i mean come on, we are 13-3, something is working. i think lillard figures it out, he's still a sophmore, and his defense has certainly improved this year. we can certainly complain about dragic's carries, and what seemed to be home team refs, but blazers can't control those things, they didnt come to play the whole night, the might have got a big of an ego with the streak and it finally bit them in the ass. they knew it was coming guys kept saying after the comebacks we can't keep coming back, last night they couldn't. learn from it and improve.
They ran Dragic off 2 and sometimes 3 picks. Dame looked exhausted, and in fact the entire team did after the 1st. As well, no one stopped the ball, as Dragic got to the base line at will when the Blazer front court would stop him from an easy at the rim. But there was also way, way too much ball watching. Portland looked like cattle out there at times circling the paint along with Dragic. The result was a WIDE open 3. Brutal. I'm not sure Stotts could have done much. The Blazers seem checked out with game in hand mid way though the 2nd, as LA was chilling with Robin on the bench. LA sat way too long imo, and I bet if Terry had to a do over, LA would have gotten in the game much faster. Perhaps Portland was had their minds on betting home for Thanksgiving and getting 2+ days rest finally. This team is resilient, but a disappointing loss nevertheless.
I think it's funny how a loss can bring out the random haters but the win streak keeps all of the trolls under their bridges...
This. I watched the first half. Things were coming easy to them in the first quarter and it almost seemed like they settled and relaxd on it. But I still stand by my original response. It is tough and exhausting to stay at an A level game in and game out. The fact that they lost control midway of the sec quarter and never got it back screams mental fatigue.
