I wanted to get this written before Sunday night’s game against the Nuggets in Denver. I expect the Trail Blazers to at least give Denver a solid battle tonight, if not win the game.

Yeah, I know — given the records of the teams that sounds a little crazy.

But here’s the deal: Portland won 54 games last season and didn’t have as good a team as it has right now, this minute. Injuries have contributed to the Trail Blazers’ record so far this season, that and the result of those injuries – playing completely without a center for a couple of months.

But now that Marcus Camby is here, I think you can take a look at Portland’s lineup and say it’s better than the one that won 54 games last season. Seriously, Andre Miller is a big upgrade at the point, Camby is a marginally better player than Joel Przybilla, this year’s Nic Batum is much improved and well, Brandon Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge are better players this season than last — at least they ought to be.

Oh, you’re going to say this group needs time to get used to each other. Well, maybe — but I think veteran players like Miller and Camby and players with the basketball IQ of Batum don’t need that much time. Look at the Dallas Mavericks, who were overnight a better team with the trade-deadline addition of Caron Butler, Brendan Haywood and DeShawn Stevenson to their lineup.

The Mavs didn’t need a lot of time to settle in — they haven’t, in fact, lost since the acquisition of those players.

I think you’re going to see the Trail Blazers, now that everyone is healthy, begin to play better immediately. And that starts tonight in Denver.

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Tags: Andre Miller, Brandon Roy, Dallas Mavericks, Dwight Jaynes, LaMarcus Aldridge, Marcus Camby, Nic Batum

Remember all those high expectations at the start of the season? Back when everyone was saying the Trail Blazers would be one of the top teams in the West? When they’d be battling the Lakers for the conference championship?

Well, wake up Portland. Whatever you thought of your team then, I’m wondering where those expectations went. The team the Blazers are putting on the floor right now is just about as talented as the one you thought you’d have before all those injuries struck.

Look, other than Joel Przybilla and Greg Oden, all the injured players are back playing. And playing well. And in place of the injured centers is Marcus Camby, who is certainly more talented than Przybilla and would also be thought by some as being as talented as Oden at the defensive end.

So why not expect big things from now on this season? Those injuries cast such a major pall over Portland for much of the season, I don’t think a lot of people have awakened to the concept that what the Blazers are putting out on the floor now is pretty good.

And pretty darned close to what we thought we’d see at the beginning of the season. Sure, the depth isn’t as good at center — but this team is talented enough to play with a smaller lineup and all that time when the young players got big minutes has paid off with many of those players now being capable of reliable contributions off the bench.

So don’t totally give this team a pass the rest of the way. Don’t feel sorry for them. There’s a lot of talent on the floor right now in Portland.

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Tags: Greg Oden, Joel Przybilla, Marcus Camby, Nic Batum, Portland Trail Blazers

What a season this is for the NBA. The Indiana Pacers were about the fourth team to come into the Rose Garden this year that I watched for about a quarter and said, “THAT is one of the worst NBA teams I’ve ever seen.”

And frankly, the Pacers could well be the worst of the worst. Ugh, they’ve got one player — Danny Granger — that you’d want on your team.

But what bothered me a bit was the way the Trail Blazers began the game. Roy Hibbard did not start in the middle for Indiana, which instead opted to start a small lineup. It was a bit of Golden State East, with a bunch of little guys out there hoisting up threes.

The result was the Earl Watson ended up being responsible for defending Nic Batum.

And the Trail Blazers responded by not even looking as if they considered running Batum down to the post and letting him punish Watson. Instead, Batum missed a couple of threes and a long jumper, then departed the floor for a long stay on the bench.

You can say that’s no big deal, but I think heading into the playoffs, you’d want your team to show signs that it recognizes and can take advantage of mismatches. It’s what playoff series are all about. I’m not saying make Batum your primary option, but there has to be some understanding of that kind of HUGE matchup advantage. There has to be a recognition, at least, that it’s there.

Down the line somewhere, there is likely to be such an opportunity and if the Blazers don’t recognize and take advantage of it, it could cost a game.

Other than that, this was just an example of the Blazers going about their business and dispatching a team that really has no business winning against any playoff team. I feel bad for that franchise. No talent and no hope is no way to go through life.

The Indiana transition defense is horrid and Jerryd Bayless loves feasting on those teams. A good measure of how good opponents are defensively is always how many times Bayless gets to the basket. Against the lousy teams, he’s always able to stomp to the bucket with his head down and score.

He doesn’t score much against the teams that pay attention.

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Tags: Danny Granger, Dwight Jaynes, Earl Watson, Indiana Pacers, Jerryd Bayless, Nic Batum, Portland Trail Blazers

Man, down a dozen at the half and coming on strong in the third quarter. Andre Miller, Brandon Roy, Nic Batum, Marcus Camby — man, that was a frenzy in the third quarter. Love it when that team shares the ball.

I keep telling you, Batum does a lot of things. The kid’s instincts are amazing. Sometimes he does good things without even thinking about them — like cutting to the basket just as Brandon Roy is losing the ball, leading to a dunk and an and-one. Talk about the perfect fit on this team — Batum starting and playing extended minutes is much like adding a new player in a trade.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt to go 19-for-19 from the foul line, either.

This could be one of those springboard wins, coming at the end of a long road trip. Several times this season I’ve thought the team was ready to take off on a win streak and I’m thinking it again now. It’s as healthy as they’ve been all season and the schedule is favorable.

I think that game Monday could be a launching pad.

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Tags: Andre Miller, Brandon Roy, Dwight Jaynes, Nic Batum, Portland Trail Blazers

I’ve been asked that a couple of times over the last 24 hours. And I’m not so sure how to answer. I think he has unlimited potential, but on the other hand I’m not sure how he’ll develop in Portland.

Not when the coach is talking about him like this:

“We feel that’s the starting forward for the future,” McMillan said Saturday. “You look at all your championship teams and they’ve had that kind of guy: the Bruce Bowen, Dennis Rodman … last year it was Trevor Ariza. A couple of years ago it was James Posey. You have to have that kind of guy, and that’s what he does. It fits his game.”

Sorry, but Batum doesn’t in any way remind me of any of those guys — and it bothers me that he may get pigeonholed in some way here. You want to make him Bruce Bowen? Hey, Bowen was a fine defender but extremely limited. On offense he did one thing — go to the corner and make threes. Rodman was a rebounder and defender who ran from shots. The rest of those guys? Not even close to Batum’s potential.

But it bothers me that in an offense that features isolations and two-man games all the time, Batum could get left out. I’m not sure he’s going to get a chance to blossom. I wasn’t as excited about all the points Batum scored in Minnesota Saturday night as I was all the other stuff.

A lot of players can get hot and knock down a bunch of shots on a given night. Batum does so many other things. Kid can facilitate for other players, he can defend, he can rebound, he can steal, he can block — he’s going to fill a stat sheet a lot of nights given half a chance.

I just hope he gets a chance to be all the player he has the potential to be. And that’s a lot more than Bruce Bowen.

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Tags: Bruce Bowen, Dwight Jaynes, Nate McMillan, Nic Batum, Portland Trail Blazers

A former Trail Blazer coach, after a rather narrow win over an inferior opponent, told me that he was feeling pretty down about the game for a little while.

“But I told myself before I ever took this job that you should never feel bad about winning a game,” he said. “So I try to feel good about every win.”

In this case, it may not have been easy. Watching a team with five total wins this season march down the Trail Blazer lane like hungry men steaming through a Taco Bell drive-through in pursuit of a chalupa, was a little depressing there in the second half. Portland’s defense, other than poor, outnumbered Nic Batum, was horrible.

By the way, all you people out there defending Nate for not starting Batum, what can you say now? So was Nate wrong? By the way, the only problem now is that the kid needs more minutes. Your only good defender needs to play more than 23 minutes on a night when one of the worst shooting teams in basketball is firing at a 49.3 percent clip.

By the way, McMillan said before the game that Batum would be the starter at small forward for the remainder of the season. Not sure why a coach would commit to something like that. There’s no reason. Most coaches would not paint themselves into such a corner.

And watching another center go down wasn’t pleasant, either. Folks, this whole thing about injured centers isn’t just a Portland thing. It’s seemingly harder and harder to keep the big guys healthy. Look around the league. It’s dangerous with all that traffic inside. (That said, this franchise is one historically unlucky place when it comes to centers).

And if your biggest shot of the night is a three-pointer from Andre Miller, you know that things reached desperate levels.

But on the other hand, seeing Brandon Roy out there very close to 100 percent is the best thing that could happen to this team. Without Roy, the playoffs are an impossible dream.

It will be interesting tonight to see what this team has left for a back-to-back.

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Tags: Andre Miller, Brandon Roy, New Jersey Nets, Nic Batum, Portland Trail Blazers

For me, it all came down Sunday night to that play — and I really shouldn’t call it a “play” because it wasn’t one — where Portland needed a three-point field goal to tie the game in overtime.

The inbounds pass went directly to Brandon Roy, who stood one-on-one against Deron Williams with really no chance of getting off an uncontested three pointer. Yes, he can make threes under duress. He’d even made one to begin the overtime.

But man, if you’re the coach you owe him more than that. Do you realize how difficult it is to get a good three in that situation? Unless your name is Kobe or Lebron, it’s pretty much impossible. Man, there are several things you can do there but the worst is to just inbound directly to Roy.

See, you have only such a small portion of the court to work with when you need a three. And penetration and kicking out to a shooter for a three isn’t going to work — the defense isn’t going to leave someone open.

Run Roy off a pick. And most likely, the Jazz will switch every pick, which would make it even harder to get him open. Put him on the baseline and run him up the lane — at least he can get a defender running at him hard, enabling a ball fake and a possible foul, or at least a more wide-open shot than he got. Better yet, inbound to someone else and let Roy run a little off the ball — if you get a switch from an off-ball screen, at least you probably have a better chance of him getting open against a lesser defender.

My point is, this team continues to use “We need another guy who can get his own shot in the fourth quarter” as a convenient excuse for not coaching. Man, watch the Jazz and see how often they just hand the ball to a player and ask him to beat the defense by himself. It just doesn’t happen.

And watch how easy it is for the good defensive teams — like Boston and Utah in the last two games — to lock in on Portland’s stagnant offense. You’ve got to move the ball and move bodies, which the Blazers so infrequently do, to get good shots.

My goodness, the Jazz had 50 points in the paint. It’s not because they’re handing it to one guy and letting him create his own shot, either. It’s because they pass, cut and move the ball.

Blowing a 25-point lead in the third quarter? It can’t happen unless a lot of things go wrong. Portland made only four of its last 27 shots over the fourth quarter and overtime. The Blazers, including Roy, missed a lot of big free throws.

And Nate McMillan continues to be so stubborn in regard to putting Nic Batum in the starting lineup. What is he waiting for? Batum had 14 points and seven rebounds in the first half. But by the time he made it on the court at the very end of the third quarter, McMillan had managed to cool him off. What kind of crazy stuff is going on here?

It’s already pretty much established that this is a developmental season — the team’s not going to the NBA Finals. So let’s get the kid in the starting lineup, playing with the best players, as much as possible — and get Martell Webster in his likely future role as a sixth man, shooter off the bench.

But at certain times this season I just shake my head. McMillan spent an NBA career as a bench player and he seems so overly concerned with his “second unit.” Man, it seems like a PE class out there some nights as he uses 10 players before the second quarter is over. Is he trying to make sure these guys get their varsity letter?

Seriously, trim that rotation. This season is getting down to the serious games and your team has already lost more home games than any other Western Conference playoff team.

Man, those McMillan-Jerry Sloan matchups are starting to remind me of the McMillan-Rick Adelman matchup we saw in the playoffs last season. And that’s not a pretty sight.

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Tags: Brandon Roy, Dwight Jaynes, Jerry Sloan, Nate McMillan, Nic Batum, Portland Trail Blazers, Utah Jazz

Finally, there is no other choice.

Yet it’s still taking some measure of agony, apparently, to get that starting lineup changed. Martell Webster to shooting guard, Nic Batum sliding in at small forward, right? What other choice is there with Brandon Roy out?

Yet, here we are again, with Coach Nate McMillan doing the same old waltz when it comes to an obvious lineup change. Just do it, man. What’s the delay? What are we waiting for?

This should have been done a couple of weeks ago, but hey — what do you expect. Lineup changes around here come hard. At the start of the season, if Andre Miller had just been put into the starting lineup alongside Brandon Roy — one point guard, not two — the team would have probably picked up three to five more wins by this point of the season.

Instead, we were subjected to all the hand-wringing involving Steve Blake and the problems of the “second unit” and who Brandon Roy could play with best. All of it was silly. The best point guard was Miller — from Day One. But it sure took a long time to get there.

Batum was the starter all last season and his improvement this season is obvious. Man, he’s needed at both ends of the court and he needs to get a lion’s share of his minutes alongside Miller — who will reward all his off-the-ball movement.

Just do it, Coach.

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Tags: Brandon Roy, Dwight Jaynes, Martell Webster, Nate McMillan, Nic Batum, Portland Trail Blazers, Steve Blake

Loved the Trail Blazer defense most of the game. They did a nice job stopping what the Spurs do best, ganged up nicely on Tim Duncan (who, by the way, isn’t moving a lot like Tim Duncan used to move) and after a slow start, held their own on the boards.

Loved the big play that resulted in Martell Webster’s open three-pointer that (should have) sealed the game. Andre Miller got great penetration, found Nic Batum in the corner, who didn’t hesitate in getting the ball to Webster, who had plenty of time to get his feet under him and settle into his three-pointer.

It was a smart play by smart players.

I didn’t like the misses at the foul line late. I expected more from Miller and LaMarcus Aldridge than that.

All in all, though, big game for the team to win against a Western Conference rival. A couple of other thoughts:

– The Spurs look so old and broken down. Their stars have so many miles on them.

– I think Batum is much more effective playing with Miller. His game is moving without the ball and Miller looks for him. I think, too, he’d fit better in a motion offense, rather than the standing-around stuff the Blazers do while watching pick-and-roll isolations.

– Huge game from Juwan Howard that was mostly overlooked by the media. He hasn’t made shots like that in a while.

– Brandon Roy needs to get back soon. I’m not sure how much longer the team is going to be able to hang on without him. Points are getting hard to come by.

– That may have been the Spurs’ A game last night. Not sure they have a whole lot left. They defend well at times, really well. But they can’t seem to do it consistently for the entire game. The energy just may not be there any more. Those guys have a lot of mileage on them from all those deep playoff runs.

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Tags: Andre Miller, Dwight Jaynes, LaMarcus Aldridge, Martell Webster, Nic Batum, Portland Trail Blazers, San Antonio Spurs, Tim Duncan

It’s starting to drive me nuts. Heck, the guy was a starter last season as a rookie and opened training camp as the starting small forward. What’s up with not starting him now?

In fact, with Brandon Roy out of the lineup, it would seem imperative to get him out there as soon as possible for as many minutes as possible, right? If you want to keep Martell Webster’s minutes consistent, you can move Webster to the off-guard right now and play the two together — as was done for a while last night.

It’s crazy to wait on this thing. Batum has the most potential of ANY of the young Trail Blazers. The kid is downright Pippen-esqe — highly skilled and magnetic to watch at both ends of the floor. You can’t take your eyes off him.

In the last three games he has defended Aaron Brooks, Dirk Nowitzki and Stephen Jackson. And done it well. On offense he’s on fire, making outside shots and finishing around the basket as well as a Trail Blazer has done in years.

I’m bewildered why he was the third guy off the bench last night, much as I’m mystified why Coach Nate McMillan continues so often to use two point guards at the same time. Man, forget about how good the “second unit” is and worry about the starters — the guys who play the most minutes. Are we worried about hurting someone’s feelings or something?

Nic Batum needs to play as many minutes as his body can handle. For the growth of the franchise, he needs to grow because this kid has the potential to be the sidekick for Brandon Roy that LaMarcus Aldridge seems reluctant to become.

And get him on the floor with Andre Miller as often as possible, too. Miller looks for the kid, who is in constant motion, and finds him at just the right time. Batum has figured out that if he gets himself free, Miller will reward him and it can be a thing of beauty. He’s going to get lobs for dunks and open three-point shots from Miller — one more reason to get Batum into that starting lineup.

Man, it’s a no-brainer. Play him and play him a lot.

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Tags: Dwight Jaynes, Nic Batum, Portland Trail Blazers