THEATER ON THE ICY SHORES OF STEVE BLAKE MICHIGAN

I like a lot of things about the Blazers’ bench this year; the ascent of Allen Crabbe, Joel Freeland continuing to defiantly get minutes, general competence. But more than anything, I like that Steve Blake is kind of like the Scrappy Doo version of Chris Kaman. This works in terms of physical characteristics, and also because Steve Blake is just super scrappy. It’s pretty wonderful. Also, you know how sea turtles naturally migrate back to their birthplace no matter what? That’s like Steve Blake with Portland. He’s been a Blazer three different times! You say coincidence, I say destiny. Plus, he kinda looks like a sea turtle. Like if there was a “which NBA player looks most like a sea turtle” event during all-star weekend, which I don’t know why there isn’t already, I’d like to think Steve would take home the turtle-shaped hardware pretty easily. PLUS HIS COLLEGE TEAM’S NICKNAME WAS THE TERRAPINS! (FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO DON’T KNOW, THE TERRAPIN IS A SMALLER SPECIES OF TURTLE WHICH LIVES IN FRESH OR BLACKISH WATER NO I DIDN’T CONSULT WIKIPEDIA THAT’S JUST A THING THAT I KNOW MAN BACK OFF.)

Anyway, a basketball game happened tonight!

The last time the Blazers played the Bulls, I was in attendance and experienced the changes to the artist formerly known as the Rose Garden for the first time. Allen Crabbe dunked all over Tony Snell’s soul, hometown hero Mike Dunleavy Jr. laid out Damian Lillard for no reason, and I caught a t-shirt out of a gun. It was just lovely. Early on, tonight’s matchup looked as though it was similarly destined to be a rout, as while I was eating yakisoba at my friendly neighborhood yakisoba establishment LaMarcus Aldridge went for 21 first quarter points. It was magnificent. The yakisoba, that is. I’d imagine LaMarcus was pretty good too though, cuz that’s a lot of points. The Ghost of Tyrus Thomas left the building immediately after I returned to discover that the Blazers were indeed playing basketball, however, and LMA went on to score only 14 more points.

After they went on a run to start the second quarter, the Bulls were pretty much perpetually up eight points for the rest of the game. This coincided with me discovering that ESPN was also televising tonight’s contest. I enjoy Mike Rice’s commentary as much as the next guy, but if the Blazers are playing on another channel I’m probably gonna watch it there. Tonight Mike Tirico and Hubie Brown (aka the same tandem who announced Game 6 last year) were on the mic. Hubie is awesome. I love Hubie. Every time I listen to Hubie talk, I learn something really insightful and interesting about basketball. Whereas every time I listen to Mike Rice talk, I have no idea what he’s saying.

Derrick Rose looked suspiciously like Derrick Rose tonight, which is a frightening thought for the Leastern Conference (ha! leastern conference! classic!), but despite his season-high 31, he was slightly outshined by Damian Lillard (35, 6, and 5 on 13/21 shooting and 7/11 from three). Unfortunately, other than Damian and LaMarcus’ twin 35 point nights, the Blazers totally played like shit. Wesley had a pedestrian evening, Nic continued to play like Tayshaun Prince with better court vision, and Kaman and Lopez didn’t really do much of anything. Steve Blake was the lone bright spot beyond Dame and LMA. That generally isn’t a winning formula.

The Blazers played poorly for the second consecutive game, but it’s nothing to get worried about. It was unfortunate to waste such awesome lines from Dame and LMA, but it was a road game against a quality opponent. You usually lose those anyway.

So yeah. Let’s go play Indiana! They aren’t very good! ALLEN CRABBE CAREER HIGH GOING DOWN TOMORROW IN INDIANAPOLIS YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST WRITE IT DOWN TELL THE PEOPLE.

Various asides:

-Bulls stars E’Twaun Moore and Joakim Noah both sat out tonight.

-I’m patiently waiting for Michael Holton and the InFocus MondoPad to get their own spinoff show (featuring Mike Rice as the wacky neighbor)

-Spencer Hawes is averaging 6 and 4 for the Clippers while Chris Kaman is putting up 10 and 6 / resurrecting his career

-Victor Claver is wearing a suit so often that I’m starting to just think of him as an assistant coach