A quick look in the standings shows Portland three games ahead of New Orleans, 31/2 ahead of Memphis and four ahead of Houston. But that’s deceptive. And with Portland having just 20 games left, that seems like a huge lead.

But the Blazers have played a lot more games than those other teams and have a lot of losses. In fact, a loss tonight to the Grizzlies and Portland is just one game in the loss column ahead of those three teams.

That means if just one of those teams — New Orleans, Memphis or Houston — gets hot, then the Blazers still have a fight on their hands.

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Tags: Houston Rockets, Memphis Grizzlies, New Orleans Hornets, Portland Trail Blazers

Some NBA winning streaks are schedule related. I can’t think of a better example than the current Portland streak. It started with a home win over San Antonio — which played the second of back-to-back games on the road, lost Tony Parker to injury in the second quarter and suffered a woeful shooting night from the outside, missing several open threes.

Then it was followed by a win over hapless Minnesota (which lost the following night to Golden State by 41 points!) and Memphis, which has exactly one win for the season.

So look, the Blazers are taking care of business. They’re supposed to win these games and they have. But do you think the high-quality teams in the league get all geeked up about a win streak over the likes of these teams? I don’t.

So enjoy the wins. Not saying you shouldn’t. But don’t get carried away and start thinking all the problems are over. I think you’d want to see a few wins over quality teams before you get too excited.

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Tags: Dwight Jaynes, Memphis Grizzlies, Minnesota Timberwolves, Portland Trail Blazers

It should. But I doubt it, because Nate McMillan is a little more stubborn than that.

In Memphis, Portland is facing a team that has some offensive firepower and I think it would be a mistake to set the defense up with Brandon Roy on Rudy Gay, Andre Miller on O.J. Mayo and Steve Blake on Mike Conley. That’s pretty much three mismatches favoring the home team.

I would especially worry about Roy against Gay, who might be able to manhandle Roy a bit and be pretty physical with him. I think this is the exact kind of matchup problem that makes the three-guard lineup problematical. Under normal circumstances, you’d have Martell Webster taking on Gay, Roy matching up with with Mayo and Miller taking Conley — much more favorable if you’re really emphasizing defense.

We shall  see. It shapes up as a road trip full of winnable games for Portland. And don’t forget, “Talkin’ Ball” shows are on after every game of this road trip — starting about a half hour after the end of the game.

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Tags: Andre Miller, Brandon Roy, Dwight Jaynes, Memphis Grizzlies, Mike Conley, O.J. Mayo, Portland Trail Blazers, Rudy Gay, Steve Blake

I couldn’t find anything about this trade in my morning paper but it’s supposedly done — with the Minnesota Timberwolves ending up with the No. 5 pick in the draft alongside the No. 6 choice they already owned.

David Kahn is no shrinking violet and he now controls a key part of the draft. He’s busting his tail to improve a team that sadly needs it. I have no idea what he’s going to do with those back-to-back choices but if he picks (or trades) wisely, the Wolves have a chance to get better in a hurry.

It looks now to me that he’s not going to get a shot at Ricky Rubio, though. All signs point to Oklahoma City grabbing him after Memphis takes Hasheem Thabeet. That leaves Sacramento in a tough spot and the word down there is the Kings like Jonny Flynn.

I think the Minnesota trade — and Rubio apparently coming to some agreement to play in Oklahoma City — drastically inhibits Portland’s chances of moving up. The Blazers may not be able to get up to get the players who would make great trade pieces (Rubio and Stephen Curry) now. You could see a Portland draft where not much happens, other than the move everyone knows they have to make — shipping Sergio Rodriguez somewhere, with probably not much coming back in return.

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Tags: David Kahn, Dwight Jaynes, Hasheem Thabeet, Jonny Flynn, Memphis Grizzlies, Minnesota Timberwolves, Oklahoma City Thunder, Portland Trail Blazers, Ricky Rubio, Stephen Curry

Here are a few things I didn’t know yesterday when I wrote about the flashy, 18-year-old Spanish point guard:

– He’s got something like an $8 million buyout with his current team in Spain. NBA teams are allowed to pay only $500,000 of these buyouts and the player must pay the rest. The buyout could be negotiated downward, but certainly will still be very high. He’s not going to earn anywhere close to enough, in his first season in the league, to pay that off.

– In order to handle that buyout, he’s probably going to want to play in a major media market, where endorsements might help defray part of that fee.

– If he doesn’t like the situation with the team he’s going to end up with he can pull out of the draft right up until a couple of days before it happens. That means, I bet, that if Memphis says it will take him and not trade him — he’ll probably pull out of the draft. Certainly he’s young enough to wait another season.

– He wouldn’t fit well in Portland because, as talented as he is, he’s still pretty wild, wants to run all the time and can’t shoot. Those are attributes that Nate McMillan probably would not want to deal with.

Sorry to rain on a parade I helped start.

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Tags: Dwight Jaynes, Memphis Grizzlies, Portland Trail Blazers, Ricky Rubio, Spain

I got more than one of these emails last night just minutes after the draft lottery results were announced on ESPN:

“So Memphis drafts second and takes Ricky Rubio . . . doesn’t that mean Mike Conley is now available?”

There’s the fact that Portland was rumored to be intersted in Conley for quite a while (remember the proposed Travis Outlaw-for-Conley deal earlier in the season?) and, of course, all that stuff about him being Greg Oden’s pal and a guy who might possibly motivate Oden.

My initial reaction is positive. I didn’t see much in Conley until Lionel Hollins took over that team last year. Immediately, Hollins put the ball in Conley’s hands, showed confidence in him and allowed him to blossom. Conley was up to that task.

I think Conley has shown he’s going to be a decent NBA player and there are lots of trade possibilities with the Grizzlies — although possibly icy relations between the front offices after the Darius Miles fiasco.

But what about Rubio? Is it possible that Memphis could decide it would rather hold onto Conley, trade the No. 2 pick (it’s going to be either Rubio or Blake Griffin) for a package of players that would allow them to improve a lot quicker than by adding an 18-year-old point guard?

Would the Blazers, who want to start adding experience to a team that’s emerging, be interested in an 18-year-old point guard? In the case of Rubio, considered a special player since he was 15, the answer would probably be a very loud yes.

(By the way, the Blazers somehow landing Rubio would cause massive strokes among basketball fans in Spain. They do NOT think Sergio and even Rudy have gotten a fair shake here from Nate McMillan and would die if Rubio ended up here, too.)

Maybe the Rubio/Conley scenario is what Kevin Pritchard meant yesterday on The Morning Sports Page (95.5 The Game) when he went on the air and said, “We’re not AT the lottery, but it doesn’t mean we’re not IN the lottery.”

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Tags: Dwight Jaynes, Greg Oden, Memphis Grizzlies, Mike Conley, NBA Draft Lottery, Portland Trail Blazers, Ricky Rubio

You have games like that one. It’s OK, especially on the road, as long as you come back and win, anyway.

Since I didn’t get a bylined story in my Oregonian this morning, I checked out the Memphis paper for the Ron Tillery story and found this near the end:

 Memphis was whistled for 15 fouls while Portland received six in the second half.

Hollins called some calls questionable but didn’t lay blame at the officials.

Just wondering, Blazer fans, if you figured out that it was some pretty good officiating last night in the second half?

A couple of other observations:

– These are the kind of games when it is so important to get quality play off the bench and the Spainiards really came up big.

– The six points in the waning seconds of the first half were critical to winning the game. When you go into the locker room at the half down by 18, it’s a lot more bleak than down by 12, quite obviously.

– Lionel Hollins has done a great job with the Memphis defense.

– Man, about time Greg Oden got to play with five fouls. You know, I remember the late, great West Linn High School coach Ernie McKie telling me once, “Coaches panic when key players get into foul trouble. They pull players off the court and restrict their playing time to the point they play less than they would if you just left them in to (eventually) foul out.” And in the end, in the NBA you have to put the onus on the officials to make that sixth foul call. There are times when they won’t but even if they do, you know you got maximum minutes.

In Houston Sunday, the Blazers went through a critical stretch of the game (when arguably, the game was lost) with Oden and Joel Przybilla on the bench at the same time with foul trouble, yet each finished the game with only four fouls. That’s not good. Critical minutes in games don’t always have to be the final minutes so it’s a good idea to make sure you get the most possible minutes from your key players. Don’t let the referees steal those minutes with foul calls.

With Oden, come on — he’s allowed six fouls, let him use them. He might even learn how to play without fouling out.

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Tags: Dwight Jaynes, Greg Oden, Joel Przybilla, Memphis Grizzlies, Portland Trail Blazers

Everyone got so wrapped up with the idea of simply making the playoffs (yeah, as if there was some doubt about it over the last, uh, two or even three months) that the rest of the regular season seems like a little bit of a letdown, doesn’t it?

But there are some extremely difficult games left, along with a couple of trap games that people assume will be easy but won’t. I believe tonight’s game at Memphis, with the Grizzlies riding a four-game win streak, is one of those traps. Portland better be ready and play with effort, because Memphis seems to be closing out its season with newfound confidence.

I think the Lakers will come into the Rose Garden Friday night and, for once, pay attention to the task at hand and be ready for the Blazers this time. And I think that season-ender against Denver is going to be pretty tough, unless the Nuggets have the playoff matchup they want locked up. For all the talk about the season series vs. Houston, Denver’s been more menacing to Portland — even in the games without Carmelo Anthony.

The Blazers seem pretty certain of a first-round series against Houston, unless San Antonio goes into the tank without Manu Ginobili. Just one word about a playoff series vs. the Spurs — if you’re one of those people talking about how much experience matters in the playoffs, don’t be wishing for a first-round matchup with San Antonio.

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Tags: Denver Nuggets, Dwight Jaynes, Houston Rockets, Memphis Grizzlies, Portland Trail Blazers

The Trail Blazers took care of business — nothing more and nothing less. The win over Memphis wasn’t much of a contest. But this is the way a playoff-bound team is supposed to handle games like this one.

Not really a lot I can say about it and I doubt you want to read much about it. Interesting sports night in little old Portland, though — 20,000 people in the Rose Garden watching one of the worst teams in the NBA play the Blazers while another 15,000 shivered in PGE Park as the Ducks and Beavers played baseball.

Not bad for a soccer town.

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Tags: Ducks-Beaver baseball, Dwight Jaynes, Memphis Grizzlies, PGE Park, Portland Trail Blazers, Rose Garden

Well, I got sicker the longer I watched, that’s for sure. My goodness, the Sacramento Kings have fallen so far I’m not sure they can get up. Getting blown out at home by Memphis is bad enough, but really — the Kings appeared to not even try. It was a surrender.

I’m just amazed, too, how the Maloof brothers have managed to destroy what was once one of the best fan bases in the NBA. They’re working hard to get their third arena built since the team came to town and they’ve continually made themselves bigger than the team. The result is that nobody goes to games anymore. The place is empty.

Uh, nice going on firing Rick Adelman, too. That worked out real well for you, didn’t it?

Anyway, I was watching only to try to get a read on Memphis before tonight’s game in the Rose Garden against the Trail Blazers. But it was difficult, since the Kings put up such a token fight. Suffice it to say this, getting Memphis at home on the second of back-to-back games is pretty nice. Portland should go out and establish its game in the first quarter and be able to limit starters’ minutes throughout.

Playoff teams take care of business in games like this and I would expect that the win over Phoenix Thursday has brought Portland up a notch in the intensity department. There should be some carryover here.

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Tags: Maloof brothers, Memphis Grizzlies, Portland Trail Blazers, Rick Adelman, Sacramento Kings