Blazers Rip Suns To Open NBA Season

Added on Oct 27, 2010 by Jason Kearney in

NBA

The Phoenix Suns eliminated the Portland Trailblazers from the 2009-2010 NBA playoffs, but a lot has changed since then. Portland’s franchise guard Brandon Roy was injured and though he bravely tried to play was essentially on one leg. The Suns no longer have Amare Stoudemire , and even pointguard Steve Nash has bemoaned the drop in talent he’s having to work with this year. In other words, it was a perfect setting for payback and that’s exactly what occurred as the Blazers ran away with the game in the fourth quarter, finishing with an 18-1 run en route to a 106-92 win at the Rose Garden Arena on the banks of the Willamette River.

The Blazers are still playing without centers Greg Oden and Joel Przybilla who are recovering from serious season ending injuries suffered last year, but that could have worked in their favor against a Phoenix team without much of an inside game. The matchup could be a preview of the struggles the Suns will experience this year–they only know how to play up tempo basketball but no longer have the talent to win that way. In a ‘run and gun’ game, the Blazers used their deep and talented backcourt and their skilled and athletic frontcourt to beat Phoenix at their own game.

Steve Nash led all scorers with 26 points and the Suns’ Jason Richardson added 22 but they received little help from their teammates. Reserve forward Hakim Warrick added 10 points, the only other Phoenix player to score in double figures. Portland, meanwhile, received offensive contribution from all over the roster led by Brandon Roy’s 24 points–one of five Blazers scoring in double figures. Nicolas Batum went for a ‘double double’ with 19 points and 11 rebounds. Roy said that Stoudemire’s absence became apparent late in the game:

“Those plays where he and Nash like to get into that halfcourt and kill you with that pick-and-roll, you could tell that was missing tonight.”

Steve Nash didn’t sound overly enthusiastic about the Suns in his post game comments:

“We didn’t quite have enough tonight but I’m optimistic that one of these days it’s going to click for us and we’ll be a good team.”

Portland heads to Los Angeles to play the LA Clippers tonight, while Phoenix has another tough road game on Saturday night in Salt Lake City against the Utah Jazz.