Welcome to Trail Blogging Blazer Fan

First off, I'd like to welcome you to my trail of blogging and opinions of the Portland Trailblazers ongoing season... I know that I am a late blossom to this season as it is half passed, but then again, it took the Blazers the 18th game of the season to start playing some fantastic/sensational/stellar basketball! You're never to young/old or early/late to blog. So just like the Blazers slogan is for the season, slightly modified, "Rise with me" and enjoy the bloggin'.

A little background of me:
- Joey Wong
- West Linn/Portland, Oregon
- 24 years old
- 5'2... 108 pds.
- Lifelong and lifetime Blazer fan... Favorite Blazers past: Sheed, Uncle-Cliffy, Ruben Patterson, Clyde Drexler. Current Blazers: Sergio Rodriguez, Brandon Roy, LaMarcus Aldridge, James Jones, Travis Outlaw
- I also love poker and have a separate blog for poker stuff

I'll start off with some of sampling two of my achieve blogs from earlier in the season... I'll blog the truth with what I see from my two eyes whether how great or terrible a player did or if the coach (Nate McMillan) made the correct decisions. You'll notice that despite Coach Nate McMillan's winning Coach of the Month in December award, you'll get my insights on why I think that it's a fluke and point out some of the flaws that Nate does throughout the season (I believe that on the Blazers 13 game winning streak, we could have easily blown out more teams, but b/c of Nate's poor decisions, most games were literally LeBron James nail-bitters in that being too close to stomach and made you bite your nails like he often does when shown on the bench)... Feel free to argue or support me and post your comments here.
Now onto the blog archieves:

Sample #1 from November 18, 2007;
"This Week in Rage: Nate McMillan"

I'll borrow this title from my favorite radio show's segment: The Adam Carolla Show. I won't have a top 5 like he does... I just have one thing in mind and if you read my last post or scroll down, you will know it's on none other than Blazers coach Nate McMillan...

I'm angry:

After the last two Blazer road games (a heart-breaking choke to the 76ers followed by a massacre to the Gilbert Arenas-less Wizards), I think its time KP (Kevin Pritchard) scrutinize really hard on who should be coaching this team in the future...

Having a 25 point lead vs. a very unimpressive 76ers team (minus there second best player Kyle Korver too may I add) and a 17 point lead going into the 4th quarter, a coach must think, "ok now, we have a 17 point lead on a team that just shot 70% in the 3rd quarter (and eventually in the 4th quarter too), what do we need to do to stop these guys?? Well, Joel Przybilla is a great hustle guy, my best defender, and best rebounder and the 76ers keep crashing the boards and are still shooting 70% from the field... "I think I'll let him sit the entire 4th quarter" thought said Nate in his mind while I'll let the 76ers come back and beat my team... Job accomplished... WTF!! This isn't rocket scientist Nate... And then to go into the post-game conference to say that we need to do a better job of rebounding... UUUGGGHHH!!

Now if that wasn't enough, onto the game vs. the Arenas-less Wizards... Let's continue with the same lineup of having 3 guards in at the same time and have our opponents crush us on the rebounds again... Well-done... Oh, and let's bench Sergio Rodriquez for Taureen Green after Sergio made a couple bad plays in the 4th quarter last night... WTF Nate?! How dare you bench the most electrifying point guard "Spanish Chocolate" after the 76ers game... Did you ever realize that everybody was making bad plays last night in the 4th quarter (with the exception of Aldridge and Roy)... Did Nate ever think, "Well, maybe this is my fault and not just Sergio so I shouldn't bench him b/c of my terrible substitutions and brainless coaching abilities...

Oh, and this comes to mind... Nate McMillan is a big "blowhard" (as Adam Carolla would say)... Remember last week after the Pistons game where he praised Sergio letting him play deep into the 4th quarter... Well, I guess his memory isn't the best either...

Just imagine a few years ago, when we had a chance to hire the Suns assistant coach Mike Ivaroni where we could have adopted this successful blueprint and have the flashy Sergio running the show...


Sample #2 from January 13, 2008
"Blazers vs. Raptors"

Unfortunately. I missed the first 3 quarters of this game but turned in just in time when the action was getting wicked. Blazers had a 6 point cushion going into the 4th and basically, Nate McMillan, coach of the month or not, blew this game for my Blazers. Chirs Bosh was absolutely having his way with LaMarcus Aldridge and was the main catalyst behind Toronto's comeback. They turned a six point deficit into a 7 point lead with about 4 minutes to go. But, with an all-star game from Brandon Roy and great shooting from "Mr. 4th Quarter" Travis Outlaw (Mike Rice's nickname for "T-Law" aka "Trout"), the Blazers would mount a comeback of their own. I wasn't too happy with Nate's usage of timeouts... He burned 2 timeouts around the 1:25 mark in the 4th quarter after the team had advanced the ball past half-court of all things too and ran out of timeouts by the 45 second mark or so, thus the Blazers would not have extra timeouts to advance the ball. Way to go dumbass, but because of Travis Outlaw's sick 4 point play to force OT, he bailed Nate out.

You figure that after getting dominated by Chris Bosh that Nate McMillan would redeem himself in overtime by putting his best rebounder and defender into the game to guard Bosh... Nope... Blazers played well and maintained a 2 point lead throughout most of the 1st OT, but in the end, Bosh and Calderon were too much... Again, it took another bailout three, this time by Roy, to salvage Nate and the Blazers...

2nd OT starts off w/Bosh winning the jumpball again and scoring a quick 4 points that would catapult the Raptors to victory... Again, after the timeout, no Pryzbilla...

I am still mind-boggled by the Blazers winning streak w/McMillan as the coach... the guy seems to be clueless in matchups and substituting players in the right situation, yet the team keeps unbelievably winning and thus, somehow, gave him Coach of the Month honors... Maybe this current road trip will test Nate's coaching ability, but its scary to think how great this Blazer team can be with Greg Oden and Rudy Fernandez coming next year, and/or getting a coach that knows what he's doing...