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

It’s not as easy to explain as the Trail Blazers would like to make it seem — you know, just sort of dismissing these games by saying that Utah is the better team and that there’s really nothing they can do to stop the Jazz.

Yes, shooting 60 percent against you from the field three times in the same season is a rather amazing statistic. But just surrendering to the premise that the Jazz are better makes it a little too easy to duck the reasons for this happening. Look, the Trail Blazers have beaten some other teams that are better than they are this season — and have done so with regularity.

But when somebody absolutely annihilates you with their offense three straight times, perhaps it ought to prompt some deeper self analysis than simply dismissing it with an idea along the lines of “there’s nothing we can do.”

Given the Trail Blazers’ injuries, of course the Jazz are better. But that’s no excuse, in a league as competitive as the NBA, for Portland not giving a better showing than what we’ve seen in those three games.

My goodness, learn from what’s happening from game to game! If you absolutely can’t hustle enough to close out on three-point shooters any better than that, if you can’t defend the pick and roll any better than that, if you can’t understand their back-cuts any better than that, get into some other sort of defense sooner.

Changing zone defenses is one possibility. The zone worked a bit last night, although it’s obviously vulnerable over a long period. Why not offer up different sorts of zones, or a matchup? Obviously, defending the Jazz man-to-man is no option you want to stick with through an entire game.

You might also try to get back on defense a little better, too. Or simply commit your man-to-man defense into sinking into the paint — challenging the Jazz to knock down outside shots at the expense of getting inside. My goodness — 62 points in the paint in one game? Allow anything but that. I’d make them prove it from distance all night long rather than give up 62 points in the paint.

There are teams in the league who don’t shoot 60 percent from the field in a single game all season. To allow the same team to do it to you three times in the same season is almost bordering on insanity. There’s one more game left against Utah this season and it will be interesting to see what happens.

I cannot imagine another 60 percent shooting night. It can’t happen. Can it?

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Tags: Dwight Jaynes, Portland Trail Blazers, Utah Jazz

Man, the first quarter last night was a thing of beauty for the Utah Jazz — and basketball purists. The Jazz sliced and diced the Portland Trail Blazers, spread them out, isolated them and cut them up, laying them bare at both ends of the court in front of about 20,000 people.

Seriously, the new buzz words for the past several seasons in the NBA are cliches by now… all I’ve heard lately from teams is how they need to find players who can “create their own shot.” Yeah, well… I’m old-school. I admit that. But I remember when basketball was a beautiful team game –when it was systems that created shots. And that’s what I saw from the Jazz last night.

Jerry Sloan has never been coach of the year? What a joke. He’s one of the last holdouts who plays the game the right way, who has a system at both ends of the court and sticks to it — and makes sure his players do, too.

Did you see the Jazz just handing the ball to a player last night, asking him to go one-on-one to get a shot? And it’s not as if they couldn’t do that, either. Deron Williams could do it any time. But he works within a proven system that provides great shots for everyone — and Williams has no trouble getting his within that system.

Rick Adelman does this. So do Phil Jackson and Larry Brown. They understand that moving the ball, moving bodies and demanding that players be disciplined within a team framework is critical to winning basketball. For all you young people who think basketball is nothing but isolations and clear outs, who think you win by just handing the ball to your best guy and staying out of his way — well, get your hands on a video of last night’s game.

A lot of fans think that just because John Stockton and Karl Malone were in Utah so long running pick-and-rolls, that what Utah does is pretty predictable. But no way. Even in those days, the Jazz would come at that play in so many different ways, from so many different angles. You’d have to stop all sorts of back cuts, off-the-ball screens and player movement before they got to that play.

And you wonder why Malone and Stockton stuck around for almost two decades, playing in nearly every single game that whole time? Well, they were never asked to carry the same load that a Brandon Roy carries on a nightly basis — the task of taking the ball in the middle of the floor and constantly trying to beat multiple defenders on the way to the basket.

I get so frustrated with people who think that’s how you play winning basketball.

Look, last season the Houston Rockets ate the Blazers alive in the playoffs — and Portland came away saying it needed one more player, in addition to Brandon Roy, who could get his own shot. Meanwhile, the Blazers had been carved up by a team with NO players who could get their own shot but instead played a team game, stayed within a structured group of sets, ran plays, worked to get each other open.

Is nobody paying attention to this? Your system is supposed to get you shots, too — but it doesn’t happen here very much.

And at the other end of the court, well, it’s the same thing. For most of the first half, the Trail Blazers couldn’t get an open look. They had trouble getting to the basket and getting open threes. The Jazz got out to Portland’s guards while still being able to seal off the inside as well as anyone the Blazers have played.

Rudy Fernandez, Andre Miller, Martell Webster and Steve Blake combined to go 8 for 39 from the field. Jerryd Bayless was 5 for 12, but made that many only because he was relentless in his pursuit of cheap buckets late in the game when the issue was decided.

In the second half, things became a little more equal because Carlos Boozer left in the middle of the third quarter with a calf strain, right about the time Williams went to the bench with his fourth foul and Utah was pretty bad at the foul line. Besides, the trailing team, especially at home, always gets that run in the second half.

(By the way, it was a typical LaMarcus Aldridge game — great statistics at the end of the night but if you were watching the game, you wouldn’t like what you saw. For most of the night, Boozer just annihilated him. If he hadn’t gotten hurt, he’d have thrown Aldridge off the Broadway Bridge by the fourth quarter.)

But don’t let that obscure what happened in this game. The Jazz gave the Trail Blazers a very big lesson on how the game is supposed to be played. And it’s real important that everyone understand that.

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Tags: Brandon Roy, Carlos Boozer, Deron Williams, Dwight Jaynes, Houston Rockets, Jerry Sloan, Larry Brown, NBA, Phil Jackson, Portland Trail Blazers, Rick Adelman, Utah Jazz

There seems to be a subtle effort in Salt Lake City to portray the Trail Blazers as villains who were just trying to mess with the Jazz when Portland signed Paul Millsap to that offer sheet.

The story by Ross Siler in the Salt Lake Tribune opens with the predictable stuff — about how the guy never wanted to leave, knew he wasn’t going to leave, etc. I mean, what’s a guy who just went off and signed a deal with another team going to say?:

Even if he did sign a four-year, $32 million offer sheet with Portland, Paul Millsap never managed to picture himself playing for the Trail Blazers, even acknowledging the obvious Saturday: “Everything about Utah is a better situation for me and this ball club.”

Hey, a guy ought to be a little nicer to the franchise that ensured him of a very nice contract. Especially for a player who was going to be coming to that team and not even being a starter. But lower in the story, there’s this:

How much interest Portland had in signing Millsap — as opposed to forcing the Jazz to match — remains in question. Millsap revealed that he never talked with Blazers general manager Kevin Pritchard or coach Nate McMillan as part of the process.

Come on, let’s get real here. First of all, Pritchard wouldn’t necessarily talk to Millsap when an offer was made. The protocol is to go through the player’s agent. Millsap signed the deal, so what was left for Pritchard or McMillan to do? The rest could wait until they knew they had Millsap on their roster.

Hey, this is big-boy basketball. The guy was a restricted free agent and Portland made him an offer. You’re allowed to do that. Did the Blazers expect Utah to match? I assume they did, but they made the offer as difficult to match as possible.

Now you’re going to somehow try to make it seem like the Blazers were just messing with the Jazz? I wouldn’t spend any more time considering that than I would worrying that Memphis was dinking around with Portland by signing Darius Miles.

Hey, this isn’t Little League. You do what you can within the rules to make your franchise a champion.

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Tags: Dwight Jaynes, Paul Millsap, Portland Trail Blazers, Utah Jazz

A lot of people are Twittering it, including Ken Berger of CBS Sports. Oh well, not at all unexpected.

So what’s Plan C?

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Tags: Dwight Jaynes, Ken Berger, Paul Millsap, Portland Trail Blazers, Utah Jazz

Ken Berger has an update on the latest about whether Utah will match Portland’s offer sheet. Here’s the part I found amazing:

One interesting aspect of this tale is the fact that Utah is in better financial shape to match Millsap’s signing bonus than was originally assumed. The maximum signing bonus that can be included in an offer sheet is 17.5 percent of the total contract — in this case, $5.6 million. Many NBA teams would have trouble writing a check that big without borrowing the money, but Utah, according to NBA front office sources, isn’t one of them. The team’s only debt is a small amount owed on its arena, so paying Millsap a signing bonus would be “a non-event for them,” according to one of the sources.

Interesting that the Jazz not only have cash lying around that perhaps a whole lot of other teams don’t have, but no great long-term debt. Man, you can win all the titles you want, but among the owners, these guys may be the envy of the entire league.

Berger, like so many others, is painting Portland as being in a bad position with its cap space if it doesn’t get Millsap. I don’t believe that to be the case. I think holding onto it, in this weird economic era, might be a very wise move. You just can’t tell me by January a lot of teams — and there will be several who are also losing a lot of money by then — aren’t going to realize they’re out of the race and want to start dumping the salaries of some very good players.

If you’ve got cap space, you can get one or two of those players. It’s a gamble, yes. But at this point, what isn’t?

UPDATE: It’s being reported in Utah today that the Jazz may get a bank loan to pay Millsap’s bonus and salary. That may or may not mean Berger was correct. Sometimes, for tax purposes or some other reason, people take out loans even when they don’t have to do it.

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Tags: Dwight Jaynes, Ken Berger, Paul Millsap, Portland Trail Blazers, Utah Jazz

Jason Quick has them here. The $10.3 million signing bonus makes it especially tough on the Jazz, of course. I still expect Utah to match, though. But if the Jazz don’t match, Portland gets a very good backup power forward at a yearly salary that’s really not too out of line with his talents.

And don’t forget, Millsap is not only great injury insurance up front, he would be just one more attractive trade piece at the deadline or sometime beyond that.

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Tags: Dwight Jaynes, Paul Millsap, Portland Trail Blazers, Utah Jazz

I have not been able to find too many people who believe Utah won’t match Portland’s offer. The Jazz have a week to trade Carlos Boozer — which means someone has a chance to pick up a pretty good power forward on the cheap.

The Blazers must know this, too. At the worst, they force the division-rival Jazz to weaken their roster by divesting themselves of Boozer. At best, they also force Utah into some sort of three-way deal that results in Portland getting a player it wants.

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Tags: Carlos Boozer, Dwight Jaynes, Paul Millsap, Portland Trail Blazers, Utah Jazz

Kudos to Jason Quick for breaking this story. It says Portland is going to make an offer that’s going to burn all its cap space on the Utah power forward, who is a restricted free agent.

I love Millsap, a rebounding machine whose motor seems to run in high gear all the time. But I’m not sure it’s the right move for the Trail Blazers. First off, I can’t understand how they’re going to be able to play him enough minutes to make him worth the $9 million or $10 million he would cost. There’s already Joel Przybilla backing up Greg Oden and that leaves just the 12-14 minutes a game Millsap would get behind LaMarcus Aldridge. You can’t give a guy playing just 14 minutes a game that much money.

And I’m not sure, even at that price, Millsap wants to come here and not play any more than that. He deserves his chance to be a starting power forward in the NBA. All I can think of is that perhaps the Blazers might be considering trading Przybilla, but with Oden’s fragility to date, that seems a little premature.

I think I’d like it much more if the Blazers just held onto that cap space until later, when some team comes to its senses about its high payroll combined with next year’s low salary cap and wants to dump salaries. You might get a more suitable and talented player in a few months.

Patience here is likely better than making a hasty move.

Handing over large salaries, particularly long-term contracts, to players who don’t figure to be starters any time soon is a very dangerous thing to do for your franchise’s health.

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Tags: Greg Oden, Jason Quick, Joel Przybilla, LaMarcus Aldridge, Paul Millsap, The Oregonian, Utah Jazz

You bet I would.

I know, I know — the Blazers got their asses handed to them Sunday night in Houston.They trailed wire to wire. But I’m going to say the same thing I’ve been saying for a month now: Portland has, 1 through 12, better players than the Rockets.

Sure, Yao Ming is better than anything Portland has at center, although not by as big a margin as it should be because Yao seems to not be totally comfortable in the spotlight. He could shoot about twice as often as he does and it wouldn’t be too much.

But you could make a case that at just about every other spot, the Blazers are better. You think Scola is better than Aldridge? You think Battier is better than Roy? You think, well, OK — yes, Artest is better than the Batum/Outlaw combination. But Artest is nowhere near the player he used to be. You could also match Roy against Artest and Battier vs. Batum/Outlaw and say the Blazers are better at both spots. I’ll give Brooks a draw with Blake at the point, but I’m comfortable Blake’s capable of more than holding his own against Brooks, at this early point of Brooks’ career.

Off the bench, it’s no contest. The Rockets have a nice group of reserves but there’s nowhere near the firepower of the Blazers.

In a seven-game series, I’ll take the most talented team every time. In playoff series, adjustments are made and all the surprises are gone. The Blazers have a little trouble defending Yao, but a game or two into a series, I believe they’d have it all figured out. Rotations become crisper. Responsibilities are well delineated.

And then it all comes down to talent. And call me a homer — nobody ever has — but I just think the Blazers, position by position, have the better roster.

And then we come to homecourt advantage. Yes, you’d love to have it. Especially if you’re playing the Lakers, Cavaliers or Celtics. But the Blazers are plenty good enough to win on somebody else’s court. Oh yeah — I know, they haven’t done it in the regular season. But again, so what? The playoffs are always different. Teams always break through on the other guy’s court. Happens every year in almost every series and it will happen in the Blazers series, no matter who this team plays. It’s just a matter of which team will blow that home game first.

The pressure is almost always on the higher-seeded team in the postseason. The visiting team has less pressure and also becomes accustomed to the other team’s arena because within two weeks, it gets two or three or even four games there. I’ve always thought home games get tougher and road games get easier in the playoffs.

My point is this: in the playoffs, talent wins out. The travel equalizes, the preparation time equalizes. It comes down, nine out of 10 times, to who has the best players. That’s one of the reasons the league shifted away from short series (it used to play best-of-three “mini-series” and then best-of-five in the first round) to seven-game series — to decrease the chance of fluky outcomes.

Against Houston, Dallas, Utah and New Orleans — the Blazers have the talent edge. And a seven-game series usually ensures talent comes out on top.

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Tags: Dallas Mavericks, Dwight Jaynes, Houston Rockets, New Orleans Hornets, Portland Trail Blazers, Utah Jazz