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Yes they lost, but no team impressed me more than the Portland Trailblazers last night and no player more than LaMarcus Aldridge.
Portland was pitted in the opening game against San Antonio in hopes of featuring Greg Oden's debut, and while that would have been fun it was going to be Aldridge's coming out party either way. Aldridge dropped 27 points on 12-19 shooting, the majority of which were against Tim Duncan who's not exactly a defensive slouch. With all due respect to Joel Przybilla (who has a formidable shot now), he's not exactly going to make defenders worry about him. When Greg Oden is on the opposite block we've got the making of David Robinson and Tim Duncan. Those comparisons are fair, give it another year.
Martell Webster is all of a sudden a legit scoring threat; Brandon Roy will be solid as always. This is a pretty good team ... right now. Against arguably the best defensive team, Portland shot 50% from the field and tied the Spurs in rebounding.
Oden is missed, but they'll be just fine this year building around LaMarcus Aldridge.
Spurs Outlast Young Blazers (Mike Barrett's Blog)
They were that good (Oregonian)
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