– As bad as the Lakers played, it’s incredible the chances they still had inside the final minute of the game. Kobe Bryant had two brutal turnovers, one in the halfcourt where he tried to pass the ball back outside and the other in the Boston end where he couldn’t get an outlet pass over Kevin Garnett and missed a chance for a layup that would have cut the lead to four.

– As good as Bryant is, you can see how hard it’s getting to be for even superstars in the NBA to “get their own shot” consistently throughout a game against a quality opponent. It’s fine when Bryant is draining difficult outside shots, but over time, particularly late in games, it’s extremely difficult for a player against today’s defenses to do that. He’s got defenders all over him. It’s no wonder why he had seven turnovers for the game.

And you wonder why I’m down on the Trail Blazers’ chances of ever making a long playoff run using so many isolations for Brandon Roy? If Bryant can’t do it consistently, how could you expect Roy to do it? And spare me from any thoughts Roy is better than Bryant.

The Lakers are much, MUCH better when they share the ball. When they work the triangle and get good shots inside. But it’s a killer for them when Lamar Odom no-shows and Andrew Bynum isn’t healthy.

Bynum is the key to this series and a difference maker. But it appears that knee is getting worse the longer he plays.

– I give Danny Ainge a ton of credit for adding Nate Robinson to that team late in the season. People laughed when he did it, but it was a huge move. At the level of the Celtics, very often just one big quarter from an unexpected source can mean a championship. Or don’t you remember Herm Gilliam for the Trail Blazers in 1977?

– I am not sure that Boston bench can continue to produce at that level in Los Angeles. I will believe it when I see it.

– Big Baby is pretty good. Over and over we see this — effort and timing matter a lot more in rebounding than height.

– Doc Rivers continues to show he’s an outstanding coach who has a great sense of his team. He has a great feel for substitutions and insists on unselfish play at both ends of the court. On top of that, I think he’s managed to stay humble and retain his sense of humor. I love the way Boston plays at both ends of the floor.

Tweet This Post

Someone asked me this question on the radio recently . . . who would I take, Andrew Bynum or Greg Oden? As best I can recall — and sometimes the shows really blur when they’re finished — I said, for right now, I’d take Bynum.

People around here, Laker-haters for the most part, don’t like to give anyone in a purple and gold jersey any credit. They hate everyone from Kobe on down. But Bynum has already shown loads of potential even though he’s had a bumpy journey so far in the NBA, much the same as Oden.

Bynum got an early start in professional basketball and will still be just 22 this season in spite of already logging four seasons in the league. He showed flashes of being a very good player for the last two seasons. He became more patient on offense, better on the boards and a little more assertive on defense.

But there are a great many similarities to Oden. He can still look clumsy and he gets hurt frequently. At times, he can look confused or lost on the court. In his brief NBA career he’s played in only 213 out of a possible 328 games. Granted, some of those no-play games came in his rookie season when he wasn’t good enough to be out there as an 18-year-old. But injuries have limited him to a total of just 85 games over the last two seasons.

And Laker people have told me that the injuries have always seemed to come just as he was reaching a stage in his development where the team could rely on him to produce. They’ve been an obvious impediment to his growth.

I believe he’s going to be a pretty good offensive player — better than Oden, for sure. But I also believe that Oden will be the better defender. They ought to both be powerful rebounders.

The point of all this is that I believe, long term, Oden vs. Bynum will someday be a huge part of any Portland Trail Blazers vs. Los Angeles Lakers rivalry. And Oden must hold his own in that matchup. It’s going to be very important.

And I believe that in the end, Blazer fans won’t have to worry themselves with comparing Oden to the great NBA centers of the past. What they need to worry about is how he stacks up against Bynum. Remember, these are still two very young players who play a position that normally is expected to develop slowly.

If one of these guys becames a dynamic force at either end of the court and the other does not, it’s going to make a huge difference in which team comes out on top. And at this early point in their development, I would not close the door on one of them — or both of them — becoming that force.

Bynum is ahead now. But it’s all up to Oden how long it stays that way. Continued improvement is a must. And that’s just one more great storyline for this upcoming season.

Tweet This Post

We’ve seen it the last two games: While more veteran teams are wilting down the stretch, the Trail Blazers still have a lot left in the tank. Man, San Antonio died in the fourth quarter and then last night, the Lakers — even Kobe Bryant of all people — just ran out of gas in the final stages. To be fair, the Lakers had played the night before but Portland ended the game on a 7-0 run.

As the Blazers push tempo, something they’ve finally begun to do in the last month or so, this becomes even more of a weapon. At the same time, Nate McMillan has been smart all season in not over-playing his best players.

The result is, at this point of the season where other teams appear to be battling fatigue, we’re actually seeing a lot of energy from the Blazers. I’m sure they’re tired, too, but they seem fresher than everyone else. That’s what young legs do for you. It’s a HUGE advantage at this time of year.

Some other notes from what was largely a very hard-played game, if not well-played, by both teams:

– The Blazer game-ops people got down and dirty before the game, leading up to the starting lineups with “Enter Sandman,” behind a lot of video of the confrontation between these teams in the previous Garden game. I’m OK with that. In fact, they can play “Enter Sandman” anytime they want — as loud as they want. Anything else at that volume just doesn’t seem right, though.

– Man, the Lakers with Andrew Bynum are long. It’s the only team in the league that could consistently hold its own with Portland on the boards for a playoff series.

– Speaking of Bynum, do you see why Greg Oden’s development is so important? Bynum is, like Oden, going to be a beast if his body holds up. The Blazers will have a lot easier time dealing with him than anyone else in the league, because of Oden.

– Speaking of Oden, he didn’t have any foul trouble at all in the first half. Why? The Laker triangle offense doesn’t offer as much in the way of pick-and-roll stuff as what some other teams do. That keeps Oden from having to go to the perimeter and play smaller players. In a playoff series, you can bet the Lakers will put some things in to exploit that part of Oden’s game.

– The Trail Blazers got a TON of calls.

– It was a damn shame Phil Jackson couldn’t have been here to make a few more jokes about the weather. You’re a laugh riot, Phillip.

– I don’t know when I’ve seen Bryant do such a slipshod job at the end of a game. He did a great job in the third quarter of blanketing Brandon Roy and after taking a few possessions off in the fourth, he was again good at it. But at the time when the game was decided, he rushed a bad three-pointer and made an ill-advised pass. I think sometimes, because he’s so good, he thinks he is capable of doing more than he can do. LeBron does the same thing.

– The Lakers, with their starters on the floor, can play some suffocating defense. When they go to their bench, though, that changes a lot at the defensive end.

– Portland won on a night when Aldridge and Roy did not have good shooting nights. That’s going to be hard to do in the postseason. Roy even missed a dunk, by the way, and I can’t remember seeing that from him before.

– Travis Outlaw can hurt you in a lot of ways. He loses his man so often on defense and rebounds don’t interest him much. If he’s not making that jumper, I’d stick with Batum, who does all the little things Outlaw does not do. Batum’s defense on Bryant was really solid.

– The Lakers did not play particularly well, but they played well enough to beat about 90 percent of the teams in the NBA. The Blazers really showed some grit in this one and actually wore Los Angeles down. Man, can you imagine about five more years of games like this between these teams? This is the future of the Western Conference — if not the entire league.

Tweet This Post

In normal circumstances, you’d be turning cartwheels over the chance to play a team that, on the road, had to play two overtimes last night and lost its best player in the process. That’s what Charlotte did Tuesday night. But the Blazers better be careful tonight in the Rose Garden.

I watched that Bobcat win last night and I have to tell you how impressed I was with it.

Charlotte led virtually the entire regulation and had a nine-point lead midway through the fourth quarter. It was an outstanding performance. The only way the Lakers got the game into overtime was the Bobcats missed five straight foul shots inside the last two minutes. Then, the Lakers got the first six points in the first overtime — a Charlotte fold for sure, right? Nope. The underdogs got the game back under control, Kobe Bryant fouled out — and the Bobcats helped that, going at him frequently when he was in foul trouble — and Charlotte got the game into the second overtime, where it won going away.

This was in spite of the fact that late in regulation, Andrew Bynum nailed Gerald Wallace with an elbow to the ribs that was judged a flagrant foul and sent Wallace in for an overnight stay in a Los Angeles hospital with what was being called a possible broken rib and collapsed lung. UPDATE: Wallace didn’t come to Portland, his lung is “partially” collapsed and he does have a broken rib. Honestly, in watching it live, I didn’t think Bynum’s foul was meant to be dirty. The replay made it look a little worse but I thought the injury was totally accidental.

It was a wonderful game to watch and it reminded me again of what a terrific coach Larry Brown can be. The Bobcats defend with great energy and play so smart on offense, taking only shots they can make and pounding the ball inside whenever they can. They got 54 points in the paint against a team much bigger than they are.

One of the other interesting things was how quickly the late stages of the game were played — because both Phil Jackson and Brown are among the old-school (and Hall of Fame) coaching school that believes well-coached teams don’t call timeouts unnecessarily. I can’t tell you how much more fun these games are without the incessant timeouts so many coaches need to call.

Brown and Jackson will call them late in games for the obvious reasons — to get the ball moved up the floor or (only sometimes) to plot a final shot. But otherwise, it’s the attitude of “we know what we want to do, let the other guy spend the timeout.” I loved it.

Anyway, Brown has the Bobcats playing hard and believing in themselves. They’ll need all of that if Wallace doesn’t play because they just don’t have Portland’s talent. But with Brown on that bench, Charlotte is tipping the ball off just about every game with an edge.

I would expect another solid Bobcat defensive effort and a lot of attempts, with dribble penetrations and postups, to get the ball inside. And that will lead to wide-open Charlotte three-pointers as Portland’s defense attempts to cover the penetration.

The Blazers, by the way, need to avoid thinking past this game. Saturday night’s bout at home with Utah is shaping up to be a monster game. The Jazz are finally showing signs of buckling under the strain of losing Carlos Boozer for an extended time. By Saturday night, that game is going to look like a must win for Utah.

Still, all signs point to the rested Blazers upping their modest win streak tonight. Unless you watched that Laker game last night.

Tweet This Post

The same way Pacman Jones or Zach Randolph gets ready for a big game, I guess. I wonder what it’s like to be 21, living in Los Angeles, playing for the Lakers and having millions of dollars in your pocket? Actually, this is what it’s like. Unless, as the hostess says, you’re “wifed up.”

Tweet This Post

It’s not just that Greg Oden has to play Andrew Bynum in the Staples Center on opening night of the NBA season. That’s fine. Bring it on, I guess.

But how about this: The guy meets Tim Duncan Friday night. Shaq Saturday, Yao the following Thursday and Dwight Howard the Monday after that. After a pretty soft exhibition season, Oden opens the season with Murderer’s Row.

“Look what the league has done to him,” Portland coach Nate McMillan said Monday. “It’s a marketing thing. He goes up against the best right away. But he’s ready. He’s healthy. But people are saying this is Bynum’s breakout season and he’s in what — his fourth season? Greg’s a rookie and it’s supposed to be his breakout season.”

It comes with the territory, though. “Big guys, big expectations,” McMillan said.

Oden says he’s watched a lot of tape of Bynum. “He’s good — big and strong, you don’t want him under the basket,” Oden said.

Oden said he went through practice with great care Monday. He’s this close to starting his first NBA season and he didn’t want anything to derail it. “I wasn’t making any quick movements,” he said with a smile.

At some point, the Oden vs. Bynum matchups are going to be nationally televised every time they meet up. It’s the two best young pure centers in the game. I would guess, though, that right now Bynum would be significantly ahead. That’s fine, too. Oden needs someone to chase in the beginning of his career. It will push him. In a year, though, it’s going to be a war whenever they match up.

Tweet This Post