A few thoughts about Tuesday night’s Blazer win over Houston:

– Brandon Roy can’t score 42 points every game. Well, actually maybe he can. But he made a real statement about the defensive prowess of Ron Artest — which isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

– LaMarcus Aldridge was terrific, back to his old self of mixing in some low-post activity with the 20-foot jumpers.

– A little too much one-on-one by Portland in the fourth quarter. Would like to see more ball movement because it appeared Roy was tiring down the stretch.

– Greg Oden made two great plays before fouling out in the fourth quarter — the put-back dunk of a Roy miss and knocking away the entry pass to Yao Ming that led to a Portland bucket.

– Yao was very reluctant to contest any of Oden’s shots. It’s a shame Oden didn’t get more touches in the regular season because he isn’t ready yet to be a go-to guy on offense. The team went into him three straight times in the second quarter — something that probably didn’t happen very often all season. NOW, they realize how important it is to get low-post scoring.

– When Yao was on the bench, Portland didn’t take the ball to the basket enough. It’s a must. I’m positive that will be emphasized as the series continues.

– When Dikembe Mutombo hit the floor with that knee injury, a very critical dynamic changed in this series. Either Yao is going to have to play much longer minutes or the Rockets are really going to struggle for about 15 minutes a game without a backup center. Often in the playoffs, 15 shaky minutes is enough to get you beat. Chuck Hayes and Carl Landry aren’t big enough to fill in at center and when Yao’s out Portland is going to punish the smaller Rockets.

– Portland has three chances to steal a win in Houston, but very often the first game is the best chance. The Rockets are trying to put a string of six straight first-round playoff exits behind them — jumping out to a lead on them Friday night would cause a lot of reminders of previous playoff failures.

– Nate McMillan really shortened his rotation. That’s fine, I just hope Roy and Aldrige can hold up.

– I fully expect Portland to get better and better as this series unfolds. At a certain point, the Blazers are going to wake up and realize that talent isn’t their problem against the Rockets. Execution is the only thing keeping them from winning the series. If the Blazers play the game the right way, bring the high energy level and don’t do stupid things, they’re going to win this thing.

– The Twin Towers, Oden and Przybilla, appeared for a couple of stretches. It worked fine, but I’d like to have seen more of it during the regular season. Sometimes you do things over the 82 games just for the sake of experimentation. Just to see whether it can work. More time could have been spent doing that and it would have paid off now.

– McMillan was using his coat to hide his play calls from the Houston bench most of the game. You don’t see that very often. Pretty soon in this league, we’re going to see players wearing wrist bands with plays on them, matched with numbers — and coaches will call numbers that players can check on their wrist bands for corresponding plays. Blue-32, red-44. . . HUT, HUT!

– A shame to see Mutombo’s career end that way. A great player, a great leader, a great teammate and by all accounts, a great man.

– Playoffs or not, the Blazers need to move that merchandise. I think that’s why we saw the team come out wearing those drab, gray, long-sleeved “Uprise” T-shirts instead of the usual warmup tops. When people see the players wearing them, they run to the counter and buy them. I guess.

– Portland must guard against a big emphasis on getting Yao in foul trouble. He’s probably not going to foul out of a playoff game, anyway. And seriously, if you just take the ball at him, he’ll often just throw his hands straight in the air and let you shoot it — he doesn’t want to foul. But a preoccupation with getting those fouls can lead to Portland getting away from what it needs to do on offense — spread the ball around and go to the boards hard. I think, over the course of this series, the fear factor of Yao’s defense will decrease.

– Something else related to that: It appears Rick Adelman didn’t want to play Yao long minutes, anyway. Even without foul trouble, he was on pace to play only about 34 minutes or so Tuesday. That will likely change with Mutombo out, but you have to wonder if there isn’t some concern about Yao’s ability to play big minutes. 

– At the start of this series, Adelman said, “Portland knows where it’s going to get its points in the fourth quarter. Brandon Roy will do that for them. We don’t have a guy like that. We don’t have anyone we can rely on to get his own shot. We’re never quite sure who that guy is going to be in the fourth quarter.” Man, so far they have that guy — it’s Aaron Brooks. Can he keep making those shots? I think he can if Portland keeps going underneath those screens and giving him open looks. That runner of his in the lane has been deadly, too.

– That was not a spring wind blowing through Portland last night around 10 o’clock. It was the entire population breathing a deep sigh of relief.

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