Davis and Holiday both played 41 minutes last night in NOP's loss to GSW. Hopefully the Blazers are rested and ready, but not rusty and can take advantage of any tired NOP legs.
Elfrid Payton sat out last night with an ankle sprain, but could play tonight and is listed as a game time decision. Tim Frazier started in his place last night, but only played 20 minutes and had 8 pts, 1 reb, 1 ast, 1 stl and 2 TOV. For POR, Maurice Harklesss will again sit out with left knee soreness.
Julius Randle has been putting up big numbers off the bench for NOP. The Collins/Randle match up of bigs off the bench should be fun to watch tonight. Randle is an aggressive offensive player and will likely go right at Collins to try to get him into early foul trouble. It will be interesting to see how Collins responds.
Of course, this is the much anticipated rematch of last season's humiliating first round playoff sweep. Rajon Rondo is gone, replaced by Elfrid Payton, who FINALLY cut that ridiculous front porch hairstyle, and suddenly, miraculously, started shooting the ball better. POR has fortified their bench, which was terrible in that series. That, along with the greatly improved play of Zach Collins, should help, but the real key is how well POR handles NOP double teaming Damian Lillard 25 feet from the basket.
What, if anything, have the players and coaches learned in the last 6 months? What adjustments will be made that were not made in that series? Hopefully, a lot less Dame/Nurk high pick and roll. If NOP is smothering Dame, like they did in the playoffs, I suspect we will see Evan Turner playing more than usual with the starters. That gives POR a second ball handler capable of running the offense and allowing Dame to play off the ball more. I guess we'll see.
BNM
