Playoff Basketball

I am so incredibly hyped up for the start of the NBA Playoffs right now. The Blazers/Rockets series tips off in just a couple of hours. Portland secured home court advantage during the very last game on the NBA season schedule by clobbering so-called division winner Denver on the home floor. Portland finished tied with Denver with 54 wins on the season, improving by 13 wins over last year's 41-41 mark. I don't think I have a season recap in me right now that wouldn't be full of !!!!!!s and OMG!s, so I'll stick to talking about the cards. First up are the last two cards of the 50 pack that I bought at an early season game. Portland did surpass 50 wins, so I had to dig up some extra goodies for this post.

This was the only duplicate in the box. As you can see, I didn't really have the foresight to save anything particularly amazing until the end of the season. I think this design was a pretty solid one for Upper Deck's second set.

From my own Blazers binder, here's a Terry Porter Fleer rookie card. Porter was going into his 3rd NBA season when this came out, but Fleer did not include him in their legendary first set. You can only fit so many players into a 132 card set, I suppose.

Another past Blazers playoff hero: Brian Grant. This isn't the Brian Grant that most Blazers fans would recognize, though. This shot was from before the lockout season where Grant apparently got bored and grew out some dreadlocks, which he became well known for. Grant went toe-to-toe and elbow-to-face with Karl Malone in a brutal playoff series in 1999 in a matchup that Malone should have won. Malone didn't win, and neither did his team, as Portland went onto the Western Conference finals before eventually losing to San Antonio.

Another Blazers playoff legend: the late, great Kevin Duckworth. This also happens to be one of the best basketball cards in all of history. Just look at it and try to tell me about one that's better.

That's right! World Champions! The Blazers are due! Exclamation points!!!!$$$!!

Token Weekly Blazers Post: Road Warriors Again

The Blazers played an incredible 5 road games in the past 7 days and did a solid job, going 3-2 on the week. They're in the stretch run now, and there's not a whole lot to talk about so I'm going to keep things brief this week. Portland suffered a jet-lagged loss to a very talented and tough-at-home Atlanta team in a game that tipped off at 10:00 AM Portland time on Sunday. They followed it up with wins over Memphis and Indiana, a short-handed overtime loss to Cleveland (who has the NBA's best overall record and has only lost once at home all season) and rebounded with a win over Milwaukee to cap off the trip.

The injuries have been a big issue. Oden returned ahead of the "revised" schedule, coming back in the Indiana game. However, Portland lost both Lamarcus Aldridge and Nicolas Batum late in the game and played without two of their starters against the Cavs. Aldridge came back last night, but Batum has not returned to action. There's only 12 games left, and the Blazers have a great shot at exceeding 50 victories this season. However, because they're in the West, the P-word still is not a certainty.

About the cards:

• I'm not sure what Supreme Court is supposed to mean, but you'd like to think that Drexler is sticking it to the hated Jazz. I wonder if Mark Eaton has a website.
• Kersey's Stadium Club card is just another reminder that the Clippers are bad. Then and now. Bad, bad bad.
• Next week (or possibly the week after) I have an extremely awesome Arvydas Sabonis card to scan. This week's card is just regular awesome.
  

Bonus: I've been really lazy with the bonuses lately. I have a lot of awesome Blazers stuff that I have neglected to scan. Here's a pocket schedule from more than 20 years ago. Terry Porter guarding Michael Jordan - good stuff. I'm starting to hate Jordan a little bit less with time when I consider the ridiculous antics of some of today's stars like LeBron James and Kevin Garnett. Just shut up and play the game.

Token Weekly Blazers Post: Road Trip Edition

The Blazers began a 5-game road trip on Monday, which resulted in a 3-1 week with the finale coming on Tuesday against Golden State. Much has been made of the Blazers tough schedule to begin the season (11 of the first 18 games against playoff teams, many road games), but so far they have weathered the storm and held up quite well. The two wins in Florida early in the week were impressive, but after a tough loss at New Orleans Friday night, Portland was able to battle through a really ugly game against Minnesota and come up victorious in the end.


Mostly, everyone seems to be buzzing about Greg Oden. I think it's a pretty strange mentality to be surprised and encouraged by the play of a number one overall draft pick who is still working his way into the lineup, but I am getting used to him and think that he's looked good in some things that he's doing. Give him a couple of months, or even the rest of this season, and then we should know what we are dealing with here. This week is another 4-game week, with three on the road. It would be nice to have to post another 3 cards here on the blog (1 gets posted for each win, plus a bonus if I feel like it.)

About the cards:

• The Walton card was showing on the back of plastic case of 50 Blazers cards that I bought. Along with the 2008-09 Brandon Roy card, this was the only recent issue in the stack, coming from a 2007-08 50th Anniversary (insert?) set. I don't really buy basketball cards anymore (though if you have some Blazers you want to send my way, feel free!) so I'm not entirely sure what it came from.
  
• Terry Porter is now the Phoenix Suns head coach, a team that has been a circus so far this season. Shaq got ejected tonight for a Flagrant Foul 2 (I could see that being a movie name) and he seemed to get into it a bit with Porter while everyone was trying to get him to leave the court. Fleer was the gold standard in basketball cards in the late 80's, but this Porter card came from a set where they never figured out how to turn off the printers. They are probably still running to this day. I have that entire set, plus an blister packed Blazers team set, plus most likely another team set or two's worth of Blazers cards, so if you were seriously thinking of sending me some Blazers cards in a future trade you might want to cross that set off your list (not that I mind doubles that much.)
• James "Hollywood" Robinson is shown on his 1993-94 Upper Deck rookie card, and I think he did something idiotic in his Blazers tenure, but I don't recall what it was. All I remember is that he liked to jack up 3's like nuts, he had some pretty crazy hair, and he was part of the trade that brought J.R. Rider to Portland.

Bonus: This is the ticket stub from my first Blazers game. It was incredibly difficult to get tickets at the time, and the Memorial Coliseum only held 12,000+ people. Now, even when games are "sold out" you can safely walk up to the arena and get a ticket without much worry. Back in the day, a sellout really was a sellout, and you had to know somebody to get one of these. The Blazers had just had a 20-1 streak to begin the 1990-91 season snapped the night before, and barely hung on to beat Dallas. The most memorable part of the night, however, was getting to see Alex English score his 25,000th point in what ended up being his final season.