Williams hasn’t played a regular-season game yet but is getting close. Odds are, though, he won’t be in the lineup tonight when the Jazz and Blazers meet in Salt Lake City.

This is one of those barometer games for the Trail Blazers. Generally, to beat Utah you have to really take care of business — you have to be physical, you have to defend the basket area, you have to play transition defense, you have to execute your offense . . . uh, I guess you pretty much always have to play well to beat the Jazz — particularly on their home floor, which the Blazers did last season.

I like Utah games. Jerry Sloan has his teams ready just about every night and that means not only mentally but physically. And it was obvious, from the peeks at practice we got this week, Nate McMillan believes his team needs to get a little more physical. Tonight will be an excellent test, to see if the Blazers will respond to that challenge. My guess is that it will get a little rough and tumble tonight.

It will also be fun to see if Nic (yeah, why not drop the “Nicolas” by now? He’s family) Batum responds to being a starter and how well Travis Outlaw plays off the bench. I would expect the bench and starting units to be a little more fluid.

Tweet This Post

Comments are closed.