This Blazers team has the #1 most appealing quality in all of sports: They have heart.

That was a great win last night. I caught the whole game on TNT. It will be interesting to see how the Blazers do against Golden State tonight - as they are also a "hot" team right now; far exceeding pre-season expectations.

Golden State is going to be tough. They have some great players like Stephen Curry and Coach Mark Jackson is doing a great job. If Stotts doesn't get Coach of the Year, it could go to Jackson.

How's this for a cool story? Mark Jackson was on the Toronto Raptors at the end of his career along with Del Curry, Stephen's father. Stephen Curry was just 12 then and Mark Jackson would take the time to play some one-on-one basketball with him. Now Jackson's his NBA coach and Stephen Curry is one of Golden States' star players. So plenty of loyalty there.

Great game indeed, I also watched on TNT and this performance showed real character...
Should have been playing beer pong everytime one of the TNT'ers said that the Blazers are one of the big surprises of the NBA this year...

And tonight the 'hawks go for their 13th win in a row, playing Spo-can't with the puck drop at 7... The RG has really good juju this year...

Cheers, It's Mike

Meanwhile the Lakers continue to lose and now they're injured too.
Dwight Howard's last freethrow was so bad the scorekeeper gave him 6 on the Richter Scale.

Odd game. Portland couldn't make any shots for about 3/4 of the game - a combination of tough defense and jitters of playing the champs.

But Batum continued to keep the game from getting away and then had a tremendous burst at the end. The whole team locked down the Heat in the fourth until Mathews finally found the range.

Of course the whole thing could have gone South if Chambers had hit that wide-open 3 at the end.

I will be shocked if they win tonight. A tough back-to-back in a place where they hardly ever play well ain't look'n good. But who knows, maybe Lilliard going home might keep them close enough to steal one.

I'll never understand why the Blazers rely so heavily on outside shots, even when they're clearly not falling. Isn't is axiomatic that basketball games are won in the paint? Shots in the paint are higher percentage shots, more likely to result in free throws, more likely to result in an offensive rebound when missed, etc. All these are areas in which the Blazers are near the bottom of the league.