Wow. Where to start? You might be tired of the back-to-back games excuse, but it's a factor. Starters typically run out of gas. Now our guys are young and I don't think their legs were really affected, but they were without preparation time and that can hurt, especially when playing a high-quality team that is both different from the team we were prepared for (the Spurs) and that had ample time to prepare for us. And we play terrible defense? Heck I think that's been pretty good. Let's not forget about who we've played. These teams are all arguably better than us. The Spurs committed 14 turn overs and we limited them to 5 offensive boards. We had 5 blocks and 11 steals. The Spurs scored just one point more on us than they did on Phoenix, granted though the Spurs were on the road against us. Those are the positives. The Spurs shot the ball extraordinarily well, but that's not due to poor Portland defense. They just hit tough shots over and over IMO. Our offense was terrible against the Lakers, but I thought the defense did good here as well. The Lakers turned it over 15 times. We had 3 blocks and 8 steals. Held LA to only 19 assists. What is most telling to me is that our defense gave up 96 points. LA put up 117 against the Clipps and 104 against the Nuggets. So even though our offense was terrible we did a relatively good job on D against LA in LA. I didn't like our D in the Suns' game. But what exactly do you expect given the circumstances. They put themselves in a position to win the game and just lost to a better team, on their home court, with more time to prepare for us. No shame in that.
