Token Weekly Blazers Post: Back on Track

The Blazers got a much needed break from the schedule makers as they only played two games last week, which was nice after the previous week's multiple debacles. On Tuesday they completed a season sweep of the Sacramento Kings by pulling away in the second half and winning by a huge margin.

Thursday's game was the one that everyone has been talking about, however. Portland finally snapped an 11-game losing streak to the Phoenix Suns and Brandon Roy went off for 52 points, the second-highest total scored by any player this season to date. The Suns recently traded for Jason Richardson, in a move widely regarded as being helpful to the Suns, but it also cost them Raja Bell, someone who has killed the Blazers on both sides of the court and has been Brandon Roy's personal gadfly. In the long run, maybe the trade will help the Suns, but I really think it makes the Blazers match up a lot better against them. The game was a classic shootout broadcast nationally by TNT and was very fun to watch, even though the Blazers indifference on defense at times is really starting to get to me. Only Damon Stoudamire had ever scored more points in a game in a Blazers uniform than Brandon Roy, and Stoudamire's big game came for a terrible Portland team in a loss to an even worse New Orleans Hornets team.

Of course, it's back to the grind next week when they play four games again, beginning tomorrow with a battle for first place in the Northwest Division with the Denver Nuggets. The Blazers also play on Christmas night in the fifth game of a quintupleheader of nationally televised NBA games.

About the cards:

• I'm not sure if this Clyde Drexler card from 1994-95 is part of a subset in the regular Upper Deck set or part of as set all its own. I'm much more clueless about basketball cards issued after I stopped collecting than I am about baseball cards, thanks to all of the trades I've done with people and all of the interesting blogs out there. There aren't enough basketball card blogs out there, though. At least, I haven't been looking hard enough. The fact that Brandon Roy is now getting mentioned in the same sentences as Drexler strikes me as both a little premature and a little awesome.
• Drazen Petrovic is a Hall of Famer. He spent his first couple of seasons with the Blazers playing behind Drexler and then wound up having breakout success as a New Jersey Net. And then his life was cut tragically short.

Bonus: Here's another from the mini-lot of 1978-79 Blazers cards that I bought years ago and recently rediscovered. Gross just had his jersey retired during halftime of the Phoenix game, just two days after Terry Porter had his retired. The thing that bugged me the most is that the framed jersey that they gave Gross to hold up during the ceremonies was the same design as Porter's - a design the Blazers didn't start using until 1991, 11 years after Gross left the team. Things like that really bug me for some strange reason.