RIP CITY!
Fun game. Other than Grayson Allen, I like Memphis' young core. Duck homer, so love to watch Dillon Brooks. Still hate that we ended up with Swanigan over both Brooks and Bell in 2017. And Morant is obviously electric. Not liking Portland's chances if they're the 9th seed facing a play-in. Hard to beat a team like that 3 times straight in a short time span.
Refs made watching the game a grind sometimes. I don't think they were overly biased either way, but the sheer amount of ticky-tack fouls made the game a boring free throw competition for stretches.
Love having three healthy bigs. Let's them be more aggressive on defense without having to worry so much about foul trouble. Also provides more versatility on going overly big or overly small depending on the matchup.
That said, the defense wasn't as improved as I was hoping given Nurk and Collins returning.
Hope Dame gets his shot back. Game could have been a blowout if he wasn't ice cold from long range. CJ, Trent, and Melo were great. Balanced game offensively.
Not seeing why people think that Stotts was tightening the lineup. Once you hit Hezonja, there's a pretty big drop off in NBA-ready talent. "The Blazers really miss Hood and Ariza" is the nice way of saying "ugh! Hezonja is getting playing time!" Sad part is that he can be a decent role player at times, but the Blazers remain stubborn on using him as a ball handler.
Totally agree that Kent was more enjoyable than Calabro.
Norm2953 wrote:For all of the people without CSN, they are not back. Seems nuts to black out the games when all of the
games are 4000 miles away just so they can make a few bucks televising their "home" games to the
local market.
NBCNW charges $25 for 8 games. If you think that is bad, try living outside of Oregon. With all of the sports bars closed, I have to spend $20 for NBA TV for the Memphis and Philly games, either $60 for League Pass or $6 per non-televised game, and will still miss the Rockets and Clippers games due to them being TNT exclusives. And then NBA TV and League Pass become useless once the playoffs start. Still rooting for Portland to get the 8th seed, but if ever a year for them to miss...