It’s very difficult to assess how well Portland is playing lately because the games are almost setups, given the opposition and circumstances. I mean, how well did you expect Charlotte to play Wednesday night after going two overtimes and losing its best player Tuesday night in Los Angeles?

But this one looked pretty good. The Trail Blazers finally played through their big people, at least for a while, and didn’t rely on the usual assortment of long jumpers. LaMarcus Aldridge ran the court like I haven’t seen him run it all season — if he did it every night it would add at least three baskets to his total each game. Greg Oden is beginning to look like he is going to mature into a player who could go 18 points and 15 rebounds very frequently. I mean, the guy was 14 and 14 in 30 minutes Wednesday and really didn’t get many touches.

The Blazers’ 45-26 advantage on the boards, 48-32 edge in points in the paint and 13-6 margin in fast-break points were all very telling. Still, 13 points on the break isn’t all that many. If Portland could ever get that up to 20 on a regular basis it would be tough to deal with.

But consecutive wins over Washington, the Clippers and Bobcats won’t tell us near as much as Saturday’s game against Utah. The Jazz are playing Oklahoma City at home Friday night and then coming in here. And they’ll be hungry, since they’re in serious danger of falling out of the playoff race.

The Blazers are going to need defensive intensity that they show only sporadically if they want to beat Utah.

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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.

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Forget about the Portland Trail Blazers’ horrid performance at the foul line Saturday night. Stuff happens. But what you need to do is take a look at one more horrific defensive effort, something that is becoming a trademark of the team’s season.

The pick and roll. Simplest play in basketball. Easiest to stop for most teams, too. Certainly the Charlotte Bobcats had no trouble handling Portland’s pick and roll. None. But, wow — the Blazers are humiliating themselves as a professional basketball team by the way they’re defending the pick and roll.

You can pick out moments of that game that make you shake your head in amazement. Switching on all those picks leaves Portland with impossible matchups. How about Greg Oden’s sixth foul? What on earth is he doing out on the wing trying to defend Gerald Wallace, a small forward, one on one? How about one of the final plays in overtime when Blazer broadcaster Mike Rice — you can tell as an old coach he’s just biting his tongue about the whole situation — says confidently, just as Charlotte is setting yet another high pick and roll: “Well, (the Blazers) won’t switch it this time, not in this situation.”

But sure enough, there the Blazers go, switching on another pick and roll, leaving LaMarcus Aldridge to futilely trail a point guard, Raymond Felton, down the lane. Felton missed the shot but because Aldridge was chasing him, the ‘Cats controlled the offensive rebound.

Maybe, for some readers, this is too complicated. See, when a guard has the ball and a bigger player sets a pick for him, the defender needs to “show” on the pick just long enough for the guard’s defender to get back and cover the guard. If you simply switch defensive assignments it leaves the big man defending the guard and the guard defending the other big man. Either one is not workable. So you usually don’t switch the pick and roll, unless the players defending it are approximately the same size.

In the overtime, Charlotte scored on two consecutive dunks (did you see Rudy Fernandez and Joel Przybilla having some heated conversation after the second one?), a wide-open three-pointer and a layup down the stretch, while Portland had nothing but Brandon Roy or Travis Outlaw trying to beat their defenders off the dribble — or pitching it out to Rudy Fernandez for a three-pointer.

I know you’re tired of reading this (hell, I’m certainly tired of writing it) but you just can’t play defense this way and have a reasonable chance to win against good teams. With a better defensive scheme — and the same players it has right now – this team would already have three or four extra wins this season. I don’t care what your lineup is or who you trade for or what your offensive philosophy is. Doesn’t matter.

You can’t win big in the NBA unless you play better defense than this. And it requires a system, an understanding, of how situations are handled, as a team. This isn’t a breakdown of individual players, it’s a team-wide problem. And until it gets solved, this team is just spinning its wheels.

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He’s one of those coaches who, after a couple of seasons, either wears out his welcome by getting on everyone’s nerves — including his own front office — or he gets bored with the job and starts looking elsewhere.

But while he’s interested and while his players are still listening, he can be one heck of a coach. The Bobcats have won more games this season than I thought they’d win and can beat anyone on a given night. Blazer fans hope it’s not this night.

You can learn a lot tonight about Portland’s strengths and weaknesses tonight by the way Charlotte attacks the Trail Blazers. Now whether his players — not extremely talented — can execute it is another matter.

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Television last night offered the opportunity to watch Larry Brown’s latest coaching venture, the Charlotte Bobcats. My goodness — this cannot last, can it? How can a man who has been at this as long as Brown has, put up with this situation? Why in the world did he take that job, anyway?

The Bobcats are as horrible. Terrible. For Brown, this season is going to seem as long as Adam Morrison’s hair. Looking as uncomfortable as he did as a rookie, Morrison is running up and down the floor with his hair in a pony tail that reaches halfway down his back.

And every time they showed the Charlotte bench, poor old Larry was sitting there, just shaking his head. This cannot turn out well, can it?

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