Meh, I keep hearing that Portland doesn't match up well with them, but truth is they don't match up well with Portland either.
Canzano refers to Brooks like he's some impossible puzzle. The guy shoots 43% against us this season. And all he does is shoot.
Artest is "too big and strong." Well. Roy seemed to have a decent night against him. If it comes down between who has the better night--Roy or Artest, I'll put my money on Roy every time.
Yao is the problem. But he's a problem for everybody. He's really tough to prepare for in one day because he's so much taller and more skilled than any center in the league. You ask Przybilla and Oden to guard Nenad Krstic one night and then Yao two nights later, and it's going to be tough to do. It's like warming up to play Michael Jordan by practicing against your little brother.
But Yao isn't like Shaq, a guy who is impossible to prepare for. He has tendencies you can work around. You can scout how teams handle him. And if you look at the stats, we've held him to 42% shooting and 16 ppg in three games. If you can hold the other team's best player to those numbers, you stand an excellent shot of beating them. Meanwhile, they have absolutely no answer for Aldridge.
Houston is a smart, veteran team that plays great defense and really good half court basketball. History says that Portland doesn't stand a chance against them, but how much stock can you really put in the history of a team as young as ours? Canzano says Portland has 4 wins in its last 17 games against them, but at the start of that bad streak Batum and Oden were 15 or 16 years old.
To me it boils down to role players. For whatever reason, their role players play us better than ours play them. They're much better defenders, and as a result our usual bench advantage just doesn't happen against this team. That's why Aldridge and Roy get the best stats in the game, but Houston gets the win.
I remember in the late 90's Utah was the one team Portland always hated playing. Stockton and Malone were horrible matchups for us. That was right up until that epic series where Rider destroyed them and Grant contained them, and after that nobody really worried about the matchup anymore. I look at how this team is built, how role players like Oden, Fernandez and Outlaw go off on other teams but not yet against Houston, and how well we contain Yao, and I think we stand a good chance of beating this team. But like all the other matchups, we have to have come court advantage to do it.
