And before we get into that, let me say one thing. Man, Carmelo Anthony continues to improve. I’m not sure I’ve seen LeBron James have a game that good at the offensive end. He was incredible. And if he keeps playing like that, he’s a big-time MVP candidate. Forty-one points on 21 shots? Sick.

There are all-stars, then there are superstars. ‘Melo was a pure superstar on this night.

By the way, the Nuggets were playing the second of back-to-back games, didn’t get into Portland Thursday until 4 a.m. and were playing without starting off-guard J.R. Smith. Not a bad effort there by the Nuggets — they seemed to have more energy than the Trail Blazers in the fourth quarter.

And now for the game. First, the unimportant stuff:

– Portland lost. In the overall scheme of things, it’s not a big deal. This early in the season you don’t really worry too much about wins and losses. The Blazers need to play better — win or lose. And if Greg Oden could have made even one of those two free throws, we’d probably be analyzing a Portland win.

– The Oden free throws. That was exactly why he needs to play more meaningful minutes in games. He’s needs to get more comfortable with that situation. And really, Roy and Aldridge also missed late free throws. Bottom line: Portland shot 80 percent from the line in the game. As a game moves along, when you’re shooting that high from the line, percentages always seem to move you back toward the norm. Or up to the norm. Stuff happens.

And some things that probably DO matter:

– This game was a wonderful chance for people who didn’t watch the NBA in the 1980s to see the contrast between today’s game and the ’80s. Portland played defense like the NBA did in that era, or in the early 1990s, when teams scored consistently between 110-120 points a game.

It was you-guard-your-man-and-I’ll-guard-mine kind of stuff. No help to speak of. Anthony consistently beat whomever was guarding him and had open shots. All. Night. Long. Come on, folks — how many points does he need to score before you double him and take the ball out of his hands?

Meanwhile, at the other end, Brandon Roy got off in the third quarter for a while, but otherwise, he was fenced in all night. He constantly had other players coming at him.

Regular readers on this blog know how often I’ve said this, but seriously — GOOD TEAMS ARE NOT GOING TO LET HIM GO ONE-ON-ONE LATE IN GAMES!!!!!!! Sure, the New York Freaking Knicks might. But Houston and Denver are not. They’re going to run at him and get the ball out of his hands — like they did last night.

With 10 seconds to go, Portland runs the same old deal with Roy trying to get to the basket but he had no chance. Roy — who usually is loathe to pass the ball to Oden — dumped it off to him and Oden seemed to know he shouldn’t have it. He immediately tried to flip it to Rudy Fernandez, but was fouled first.

Damn, if Oden is the defense-first, don’t-worry-about-offense center, why is he even out there in that situation, where you’re behind and need a basket to win? (Yes, that’s sarcasm. I would have played him — just surprised they did. If you want him to grow, you must live with his mistakes — like you did with Roy and Aldridge).

Anyway, I’m just saying. How can you sit there and see what the Nuggets are doing with Roy and not do the same thing to Anthony? On defense, you have to help each other. The backbone of good NBA defense is help. You can’t let players eat you alive one-on-one because too many of them can do just that.

And man, if you want to free Roy for a shot late in the game, move him around. Move the ball around. Don’t make it so easy for other teams to lock in on him. Right now, Portland’s ball movement is just awful. They aren’t moving bodies, either. It’s a bunch of guys standing around watching one guy — not always Roy, sometimes others –  play one-on-one.

They don’t even get anything out of their pick-and-roll anymore. Especially Roy. He never even looks for the guy who sets the pick. And rarely uses the pick.

Now you can say, hey — it’s only the second game of the season. Yeah. Except that all those things were huge problems all last season. Portland’s team defense has not progressed at all this season. Yes, opponents have not shot well against them. But mostly, it’s been because they’ve just missed a lot of easy shots. Opponents are still getting just about whatever shots they want so far in the exhibition and regular season.

And I when I harped on this stuff last season, all anyone wanted to do was point to the 54 wins and call me a malcontent. Well, they may win 54 again. But they’re never going to beat the best teams in the league unless they address some of this stuff. And really, it all starts with the defense.

And their willingness to settle for jump shots on offense. And it’s easy to do that, because opposing defenses are sinking back into the middle, sagging all over the place. And Portland’s ball movement has been so poor the defenders can still close on the outside shooters, which is why Portland is really struggling from the three-point line.

Without movement of the ball and players on offense, it’s going to get tougher and tougher for them to score.

– LaMarcus Aldridge. What the heck is going on there? They try so hard to get him off but so far he’s seemed so out of sync. You assume he’ll snap out of it soon.

– The point guards. I’m not sure any of them are playing very well. Miller is forcing bad shots and Blake is missing good shots. Very unsettled situation there.

– Martell Webster. Great energy and playing well. I’d like to see him get the ball more often. Like to see him get more shots.

Oh well, it’s the NBA. There’s another game Saturday. And hey, there’s even the season’s first Talkin’ Ball right after the game on Comcast Sportsnet.

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Tags: Andre Miller, Brandon Roy, Carmelo Anthony, Denver Nuggets, Greg Oden, LaMarcus Aldridge, Martell Webster, Portland Trail Blazers, Steve Blake

The Denver Nuggets bring Carmelo Anthony and a whole lot of other good players tonight to the Rose Garden for this TNT game. And we’ll find out how much defensive progress Portland has made thus far.

Certainly, too, we’ll find out about the offense. The Utah Jazz carved up Denver pretty well at times last night and Portland should, with patience, do the same thing. The Nuggets didn’t seem real interested in being gritty at the defensive end. This is an early division “big game” and yes, while it’s early, you’d like to establish a superiority as soon as possible if you want to win the division title.

The way to beat these guys is attack them, take it to the basket, get into the paint. And then at the other end, you have to pay attention and not let them get easy baskets.

And oh, you better rebound. These guys are good on the boards. Real good.

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Tags: Carmelo Anthony, Denver Nuggets, Dwight Jaynes, Portland Trail Blazers

Carmelo Anthony didn’t play in the fourth quarter. Enough said.

And really, even with LaMarcus Aldridge and Rudy Fernandez out, there are still so many players who need minutes that it was hard to get a flow.

In fact, I don’t think the Trail Blazers have played very well at all in the exhibition season. A lot of that is just because the rotation players haven’t had a chance to play enough minutes together to find a cohesion. In fact, I’m astounded at how poorly the team has played in the early going.

And while you can point to individual things by certain players, as a unit this has been a very disappointing preseason so far. There are just too many people to plug into the equation and that means some players pressing too hard, worried about minutes, and others not getting enough time to get into a rhythm or not knowing their role.

If you ask me, a lot of the exhibition season has been a waste. I see little progress at all on defense, which was the priority. I think replacement referees have made it hard, too, to get any flow into games. But that’s not the sole reason. What they have done, too, is make it difficult to see if Greg Oden has made any progress with foul problems.

I mean, I think he has but you won’t know that until the real guys get back.

And maybe about that time we’ll see the real Blazers back, too.

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Tags: Carmelo Anthony, Dwight Jaynes, Greg Oden, Portland Trail Blazers

A few items before looking ahead to the playoffs:

– An incredible season, all in all. Congrats to Paul Allen, Kevin Pritchard, Tom Penn, Larry Miller, Nate McMillan and the dozens of dedicated Trail Blazer employees who make it a very special organization. My hat is off to them. The success they have had this season is well deserved.

– Wednesday night’s game was perhaps the weirdest of the season. Can you remember a game where the winning team’s starting lineup didn’t produce a single player who scored in double figures? How about a game where the starters combined for just 32 points — yet the team scored 104 and won by 28? That’s borderline ridiculous.

– Sergio Rodriguez had one of those games where you wonder just how good he could be for a team that wants to push the ball all the time. Man, he’d be good for the Knicks.

– Rudy Fernandez had a great night — but he looks awfully gimpy to me. His back was bothering him, big time, by the end of the game. And I also believe the two men from Spain are the only ones who really understand how to feed the ball to a big guy at the rim.

– The Blazers have had so much more energy than the teams they’ve been playing lately and Wednesday was no exception.

– Carmelo Anthony was worse, even, than his 3-for-18 shooting night indicated. The guy is easily distracted.

– LaMarcus Aldridge and Brandon Roy combined for 15 points on 6-for-17 shooting. And the Blazers won by 28 — that’s not likely to happen again for a decade or so.

– Man, New Orleans let Michael Finley get off a clear three-point shot to tie that game at the end of regulation down in San Antonio and it messed up the seeding all through the conference. Foul the guy.

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Tags: Brandon Roy, Carmelo Anthony, Denver Nuggets, Dwight Jaynes, LaMarcus Aldridge, Michael Finley, Portland Trail Blazers, Rudy Fernandez, Sergio Rodriguez

Man, game after game it’s the same old thing. I had the pleasure of meeting a lot of great Blazer fans (and great people, in general, of course) at The Agency last night for Blazers Edge night — and congrats to those guys, it was a wonderful event.

Anyway, last night I remember saying to Brian Hendrickson in the first quarter — “Same old story. Get behind early. Stay about the same number of points behind for a while. Second-half comeback gets you close, but then fall back. It’s the same game, all over again.”

Basketball’s version of “Ground Hog Day.” And I felt worse about it Thursday because of that great crowd gathered together at The Agency — what a night it would have been for them if the game had just been close. Didn’t have to be a win — just a close game.

Why is this happening with such consistency? Well, you can cut them some slack and say that youth has something to do with that. But if you keep using that as an excuse, I’m going to have to ask about the benefits of youth — where is the enthusiasm and energy of youth? I sure didn’t see it last night. Yes, back-to-back games. But this was a BIG GAME.

I think it comes back to defense. One team played it and the other didn’t. Parts of last night’s game — and this happens in many road games — were a Denver dunk fest. It astounds me how much penetration to the basket the Blazers allow, particularly on the road, while at the same time surrendering so many open outside shots. How is that possible?

When you’re not a good defensive team to begin with, being on the road amplifies the problem. Yes, this is a broken record — but so are all these road losses: Portland has to get better on defense. As a team.

A few little sidebars:

– You should have heard all the cheers at The Agency last night when Jerryd Bayless entered the game. Fans love him and I guess they hoped he’d attack the basket and play defense. He did neither one — this game was way over his head. For all his potential, he’s still not understanding NBA defense. He wants to hand check and bump outside. They don’t let you do that in the NBA these days. And when Bayless has the ball, they’re dropping off him just daring him to shoot a jump shot. I believe I’m the last person in town to believe Sergio still should be playing ahead of Bayless.

– Brandon Roy did not set any kind of tone early in this game, which I think he must do in road games. He sits back, Kobe-like, trying to get his teammates involved. But his airball, his miss of a free throw — those things hurt early in that game and he seemed slow to get into the mix.

– LaMarcus Aldridge: He makes four in a row and you think you can ride him. Then he misses five in a row. That’s kind of his season — not quite as consistent as you’d like.

– The Nuggets had 52 points in the paint and not many fast-break points. And this isn’t a team with a dominant post player who is going to take you down low and brutalize you. Those paint points came off penetrations and offensive rebounds.

– Nobody seemed to have a clue how they wanted to go about defending Carmelo Anthony. He’s a terrific all-around offensive player but it might be better to get up on him and make him a driver than to sag off and allow open shots. Or maybe not.

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Tags: Blazers Edge, Brandon Roy, Carmelo Anthony, defense, Dwight Jaynes, Jerryd Bayless, LaMarcus Aldridge, Portland Trail Blazers, Sergio Rodriguez, The Agency

He’s resting a tender elbow. Now that changes the matchups a little, doesn’t it? Look for a couple of big nights from Chauncey Billups.

For the season, Anthony is shooting 42.0% from the field and 42.9% from three-point range for 20.5 points, 7.4 rebounds, 3.4 assists and 0.96 steals per game.

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Tags: Carmelo Anthony, Chauncey Billups, Denver Nuggets, Dwight Jaynes, Portland Trail Blazers