Trail Post

Wow.

Don’t you love it when the worst game of the season becomes one of the best? At half time, we were only down by 7, but it felt like the abyss. Without those clutch plays by Rudy Fernandez, we would have been down 15, and when you looked at the +/- for that point of the game, not a single player was in positive digits. Our two heroes for this game both had 0.

Ah yes, the heroes. The first one has to be the one who took the heroic shot, one Travis Outlaw. The oft-maligned small forward stepped up and did what he knows how to do. He was the best player (without a “La” at the beginning of their name) on the team for the whole of the game, and really gave the effort that we should be expecting from him every night. Thank goodness for Nate’s most patented coaching move, the Nate McMillan Kick in the Ass© (which has worked its wonders on Steve Blake and Greg Oden so far this season), and thank goodness for Travis Outlaw.

The other two big players of the night (once again, without “La” in front) had to be Rudy Fernandez and Jerryd Bayless. Their numbers don’t look impressive, but in a close game, it’s all about timing. Rudy turned up his intensity in the first half, which put it within shouting distance for Jerryd Bayless to make it close. Speaking of Jerryd…damn! It’s good to see him show the fire! He was firing himself up, he was firing the team up, he was firing the crowd up, and I think I even saw Sheed get up and cheer for the Blazers before he realized what was happening. Jerryd’s stint was probably one of the loudest 8 point performances I’ve ever seen. Good to have you on the team, man.

Oh yeah, LaMarcus rocked, as usual. Good to see him step up.

Anyway, we have another long break, so we can all pray for Roy’s hamstring to finally heal in time for Saturday.

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