Here we go -- a playoff series for the Blazers. It's been six years since the last one. We have our Blazer flag flying over the front porch, and our spendy tickets for all the home games in hand, and so it's time to get psyched about the upcoming contests with the Houston Rockets.

Ah, the Rockets. They are truly a tough opponent for Portland -- one of the worst, really. Last season, they swept Portland in their four regular-season battles; this season, they beat Portland twice in Houston, and lost once in Portland. The Blazers have lost 10 out of their last 11 games in Houston. Over the past five seasons, the Rockets' record against the Blazers has been 14 wins and 4 losses. Ouch.

I saw the Rockets up close in April 2007, when they beat the Blazers here in Portland; and in December 2005, when they also prevailed here. Neither game was close.

The key men on the Houston squad are the prolific scoring guard Tracy McGrady and the 7-foot-6-inch Chinese center Yao Ming. McGrady is always injured, including now (he won't play again this year), which means that Yao is their clear star. He is backed by a strong supporting cast. Ron Artest, best known for punching a fan's lights out in 2004 and being suspended for a year on account of it, is back and playing well as a swing man despite his constant stream of off-court problems. Then there is forward Shane Battier, whose traditional statistics are not dazzling but whose many contributions were well documented in a recent Times magazine profile. Another guy making a mark is Argentinian big man Luis Scola, who has had an impressive second NBA season.

McGrady's backup, Von Wafer, is a former Blazer who has been showing some explosive potential in Houston after Portland gave up on him. Other familiar faces include ex-Oregon State Beaver guard Brent Barry, who recently celebrated his 49th birthday, and Aaron Brooks, the former Oregon Duck point guard. A contemporary of Brooks, Carl Landry, gets a fair amount of time at power forward, where he puts up numbers like 10 points, 6 rebound a game.

To Blazer fans of a certain vintage, however, the most familiar face on the Rockets bench is its head coach, Rick Adelman. Adelman coached the Blazers to their two most recent appearances in the NBA finals, in 1990 and 1992; he also played for the Blazers in the earliest days of their existence. He took over the Rockets two years ago, when Jeff Van Gundy was fired. When last I looked, Adelman still owned a house in the ritzy Dunthorpe section of Portland. His son, a basketball coach at Lincoln High School, was recently in the news, but not in a good way; another son reportedly has had some of the same problems.

Adelman's appearance in a Blazers-Rockets playoff game holds more than a bit of irony. The Blazers were eliminated by Houston in the first round in 1994; that was Adelman's swan song with the Blazers.

The Rockets can never seem to get past the first round of the playoffs any more, and the Blazers certainly hope to continue that streak. But the first-round jinx seems to attach more to McGrady than to Yao, and with only the latter suiting up against the Blazers, it's not clear that fate is tilting against Houston as drastically as it once may have.

Of all the players in the American pro league, Yao is one of our favorites, and Adelman brings back fond memories of days when we screamed deliriously at the exploits of Clyde, Terry, Buck, Jerome, and Duck. If we're prepared to boo anyone on the Rockets, it would have to be Artest, but we're carrying no baggage against the rest of the Houston team. Here's hoping for a hard-fought, cleanly played series... that the Blazers win in six games.

The schedule, just announced:

Game 1 - Sat April 18 Houston at Portland 7:30PM ESPN
Game 2 - Tue April 21 Houston at Portland 7:00PM NBATV
Game 3 - Fri April 24 Portland at Houston 6:30PM ESPN
Game 4 - Sun April 26 Portland at Houston 6:00PM TNT
Game 5 * Tue April 28 Houston at Portland TBD TBD
Game 6 * Thu April 30 Portland at Houston TBD TBD
Game 7 * Sat May 2 Houston at Portland TBD TNT
* - If necessary