Portland Trail Blazers Preview: "The Martha McKeen"

In an effort to gear up for the NBA season (even though the season started last week), we will view the upcoming season through the eyes of Edward Hopper. Feel free to add your thoughts on the 2010 Blazers in our comments section.With a divine wind, this boat slices through water, making waves appear like loaves of bread. The sunlight crowns the waves in butter. That's on a good day when partaking of the ocean is like communion and eternal salvation. On any other day with a less than perfect wind, attempts at sailing around the sandbar can be as futile as a kamikaze mission. Today the wind is heaven sent, and if Commodore Roy were less hungover, then today would be the day that the little boat that could sailed out past the breakers and out of sight from the coast, like a dove sent from the beach into the great blue yonder.

But Commodore Roy is hungover, singing W. B. Yeats poems to the tune of Modest Mouse songs, banging his peg leg onto the hollow drum of the deck and playing slap bass on his thigh with the palm of his hand, and, unfortunately, he's yet to realize the anchor of the S.S. Oden still drags the bottom of the ocean's floor from where it was dropped the night before.

The heavy chain pulls at the beams of the boat's hull. Commodore Roy believes the creaking is the sound his skull makes after a night of too many bourbons. Nails are pried loose from wood, and, below the deck, water gathers like lead in the belly of a whale; it's gut is about to burst. The bleeding is internal, caused by an anchor no one can see. Sea gulls glide through sun rays on what appears to be the consummate sea breeze, but the journey of the S.S. Oden appears to be much shorter than her crew intended.

Dunk of the Week: Aldridge Shames Dampier

Since we have been doing the dunks of the week, no big men have stood up and claimed the worthless yet honorable prize. That changed last night when Lamarcus Aldridge faked a pick and got some space from Dirk. Steve Blake sees the open lane and drops it in to Lamarcus just in time for him to posterize the helpless Erik Dampier.



That was sick, but what is up with that monstrosity of a logo at midcourt?

Dunk of the week: Cheikh Samb, meet Mr. Roy

So your an NBA player; you get paid well and you get to travel the country playing the game you love. But you only average 6 minutes a game and you have only played in 9 so far. Your two biggest dreams after making it to the league and lasting longer than a season, are to win the Finals and to get your own poster. Playing for the Clippers, you understand the Finals are an impossibility. But what about a poster? With that amount of playing time the probability of ending up on your own poster are to put it mildly, bleak. Yet in the clip below, Samb finds away around these statistical barriers by borrowing a trick from Greg Ostertag's book: If your not going to get your own poster, get on someone else's.

The number of the day is:

(Click the photo to enlarge)

52, as in Brandon Roy dropped fifty-two points in a 124-119 victory over the Phoenix Suns. Roy was 14-of-27 from the floor and 19-of-21 at the line. He bested his career high of 38 and ended up two short of the franchise record of 54 set by Damon Stoudamire. Roy has been lighting the scoreboard up averaging 36.4 points in his last five games, and was showered with chants of MVP from the Portland crowd. His offensive assault on the Suns included a tiebreaking 3-pointer with 1:01 left that helped the Blazers go on a seven-point run to end and win the game.

If he can manage to play at this high of a level, the Blazers will have to be looked at as a contender in the west and those chants of MVP will have to be taken seriously.

Greg Oden "This one is for the ladies"

Greg Oden has everything; skills on the court, money, women(they always follow), and he can sing. Ok he can't sing, but here is video of him doing it anyway.

My Great Grandfather told me a story of how he actually got to meet Greg Oden, it was at a campaign rally in Chicago when Oden was stumping for Woodrow Wilson.
As seen on Hard for the Yard