Philadelphia 76ers @ Portland Trail Blazers 3/23/2009 Game Thread (Merged)

All I can say is REFS!
It must be easy playing D on Brandon Roy if you are allowed to play with your hands.
How did they blow the call in the 4th when the ball CLEARLY went out of bounds off of Iggy. next play 2 pts Phily.
Then, they call Rudy for a foul on a 3 pointer when Iggy falls down, wtf?!?! Another 2 pts giftwrapped.
We didn't play great, but we played good enough to win, and we got dicked over in the ass by Javie and co. This was about as bad a screwjob I've seen in a while. I hope Nate talks shit about them in the media. Take the fine. We need to bitch, because I just won't watch the NBA anymore if I have to put up with that biased piece of trash that they call the NBA. No other sport is dictated by officiating than basketball, and it was God-awful tonight.

Our division hopes were lost tonight, no doubt...but we can still make the playoffs.
At least Greg looked amazing tonight.

Speaking of Greg, WTF was Nate thinking taking him and Joel out for 5 minutes in the late 1st, early 2nd? That really dicked us as we had no interior D and dug ourselves a huge hole.

Fuck this game!

 

It's been awhile since I've felt this down in the dumps after a loss. Fuck!

I hate that we blew a great game by G.O. Philly played great, but we had a fucking 2-point lead with 30 seconds left. It's so frustrating to lose a game like that especially on our home court.
We've still got a lot of work to do to sew up a playoff spot. I still don't think we're out of the woods yet.

This might be the most frustrating loss of the season... UGH UGH UGH. Shit.

 

This game was the vile bowel movement of some slothful herbivore.

When you have nearly 30 more FG attempts that the other team, there is no way in hell you should lose. If even half of those go in, their edge at the FT line becomes irrelevant.

The team can't hide behind Roy's bad game, or even the wretched officiating. The entire team suffered a severe attack of hubris, and didn't bother to show up for the 1st half.

 

Nothing and I mean NOTHING, can top the cluster fuck that was the Clippers home loss in December, but this is a close 2nd or 3rd. Philly is a really weak squad (+3 over .500 in the Least) and we choked.

 

Ugh... forgot about the damn Clippers game. But being this late in the season and a chance to get first place in the division with 11 games left, and having the game in hand, shit. I'm so frustrated..

 

I feel ya...anyone else felt like a loss was coming in overtime?
Our offense down the stretch was atrocious. Blake went dribble happy and we forced up so many tough shots. We never ran a smooth set. We had Oden open so many times off of the pick n roll but we have no one who can make the passes into him.

 

I figured we might drop one home game, but I did NOT expect it to be to Philly. Several things went wrong, obviously the slow start. Many stupid plays ended up costing us, like when Sergio, instead of holding for the final shot, jacks up a stupid 3 and results in Iggy hitting a 3 at the end of a half.

I was upset when Nate put Frye in the game to replace Oden. I knew we were going to lose major ground there, and we did. We have TWO starting quality centers Nate so you don't need to be so protective.

And what's our deal with Overtime? We play overtime like we start games. 8-1 in close games sounds nice, but we're only 1-4 in OT.

And of course, if I could turn myself invisible I"d go to the Rose garden and plant my shoe right up Leon Woods ass. Horrible calls tonight.

 

OK, I know I am angry and ranting, but just once.....

Just once I would like to see the Blazers respond to being screwed by the refs, by sending someone like Ruffin out on the floor to intentionaly take out a knee - then point right at Javie and scream "this one was for YOU MF'er!"

 

What Philly did that other teams are learning to do against Portland is simple: playing aggressive, heads-up man defense, double-teaming Roy almost every time he touches the ball, and making the Blazers rotate the ball to the open man, which they seem to have a very hard time doing. The last several games, I've seen athletic teams make the Blazers damn-near ineffective on offense, simply by almost over-playing on defense. The Blazers usually have a big size advantage, with Oden/Pryz and Aldridge, yet they very rarely run plays to get the ball down low to exploit it. LaMarcus seems to have gone back away from his dominating low-post play and seems content to hoist 20-foot jump shots from the top of the key.

A very frustrating game to watch, because *I KNOW* the Blazers are a better team than the 76ers. But the 76ers played a better game, shot the lights out, and wanted it more. That's the bottom line.

 

AND had Javie n Co in their hip pocket

 

I'm not as upset about the officiating as maybe they are making it out to be on Courtside right now... sure there were some non-calls, but we had a six-point lead and the momentum with 8 mins left. We had a two-point lead with 30 seconds left, and we had the ball and a chance to win the game with the ball in our best player's hands with 20 seconds left.

I put the onus on us for not finishing this game off. And yeah, come overtime... I didn't feel too confident. Shitty shitty.. I got to keep ranting.

 

The calls were just so blatant is why I am pissed.

It is an 82 game season and you can't play great every night. Some night you just play good enough to win and hope for a fair shake of the whistle. We played good enough to win but got hosed.

Like I stated earlier, the ball out of bounds in the 4th that clearly went off Iggy went their way as the fucking ref from half court makes the call and says off of us. The play resulted in 2 pts.

I have no idea how they called Rudy for a 3 pt foul on Iggy as well..he wasn't even near him..an extra 2 pts.

That's game right there, unless you want to count how much they were reaching in all night long? No wonder Roy played terrible..easy to check him when your allowed to grab like that

 

Just go back from the game.....to fight all the way back and then lose it was heart breaking.
Some random thoughts as they come to me:
-Fourth quarter we are up five have all the momentum and Sergio on the break decides to drive into three sixers turns it over and philly proceeds to get a three. We never can maintain anything after that.

-One of Roy's worst games of the year, a lot which can be attributed to the sixers defense....they match up really well with him. The last possession of the night summed everything.

-It's hard to say Blake had a bad game when you score 20 but he probably game up at least 40 in shape or form. He was Andre Miller's bitch the entire night....to an extent that was truly astonishing. It's been a long time since I have seen one player abused that blatantly and him not being able to keep Miller from penetrating was one of the keys to the loss.

-I didn't understand our defensive philosophy tonight. Instead of packing in the middle and forcing PHilly to take outside shots our guards overplayed their man and ended up getting beat off the dribble over and over and over

-LMA's outside shot hasn't looked right since the concussion. However the rest of the was pretty much awesome. Great game

-Greg Oden was beastly, it really is amazing how good he is and yet has barely scratched the surface of what he can become....too bad our guards didn't show up

-Rudy played a decent game but tossed up waayyyyyy too many threes, some of which were really bad shots.
-Refs were Horrible no way around it, but they did not lose us the game....that would be guards inability to keep their man in front of them.

- Teams in the playoffs will use this game as a template on how to play us, still if we get a below average game from Roy instead of horrible one, we win

-This game is over it's time to start thinking about PHX

 

Ok a little smile from me
i just watched the highlights and loved seeing the Oden put-back throw down and he comes down the court with a smirk on his face yelling "Ooooohhhh"...man the Kid is going to be great.

 

We accept responsibility for things that happen as a result of our play but we don't accept any responsibility for bad calls. So I think it's stupid when morons like Antonio Harvey try to deflect blame away from the officials. We would have won if it were not for he horrible calling in favor of the Sixers. But what the fuck...it's the shitty NBA.

 

He fouled him on that play. slowed it down. He clearly ran into his leg.

 

Yeah, I loved that play. That's the first time I've seen him smile on the court, enjoying the moment and actually showing some confidence in himself and thinking he did something pretty good.

For a guy his size, he quick-jumped pretty good. It was some pretty good explosion shown by G.O.

 

I think Thursday becomes a real must-win against Phoenix to calm some of the doubt still out there about making the playoffs. To get our magic number down to six is going to be crucial.

 

Harvey's a moron to argue that referees don't dictate games - they damn well do! The amount of physical play they allow on any given night has more of an impact on a game than anything else. Yet another reason why I cannot stand Antonio Harvey.

 

...I have been frustrated with this all season long!!! BANG IT DOWN LOW...BANG IT DOWN LOW..AND BANG IT DOWN LOW SOME MORE [inside out is the key to success]!!! I do not recall too many championships teams that did not use this tactic to its full advantage