1st half thoughts.

Sort of live blogging this... Here are the thougths I had.

Frye's first 3 of the season didn't look good. I know he has been working on it, and I won't judge from one shot but it looked rushed and flat.

Frankly, the whole team has looked jittery and rushed. I know they are young, but I was hoping at least Roy and Aldridge would show a little more poise. I hope it gets better soon or tonight could get long in a hurry.

Greg looks a little lost on the offensive side of the ball, at times I can't say I am completely surprised, but this is the first chance I have been able to watch him. He does look rebounding on the defensive side.

Half way through the 2^nd and Outlaw looks like he is starting to heat up. That would help. Portland needs some kind of offensive spark if they are going to make a game of this. Of course, that doesn't mean he nees to force ugly shots...

Like you would expect from a young team, Portland looks really good on one defensive possession, and really bad on the next. If there is anything to take away from this game going forward I think it is this. There is a lot of talent, but it is still young. Consistency will take time, and I think Blazer fans are going to need patience.

I still say Portland should make one of the last 2 spots in the playoffs this year.

Greg just dropped a great move. Drew the double team, split it, drew the foul and still got off a clean shot.. It didn't go in, but it was a look at what he can do.

That goal tending call on Oden looked like bullshit to me. You will notice TNT didn't show the replay...

Blake needs to knock down wide open shots. I have been a big defender of him, but you need to knock down those shots.

LA is playing aggressive defense, but Portland is making it really easy on them. They have no offensive focus. Whatever the game plan was, it doesn't seem that Portland is executing it.

The last 2 minutes there looked a lot better. Let's hope Portland comes out with better energy after the half.

No matter what the TNT announcers say, I don't think there is any legitimate home court advantage in the LA Coliseum.  

Quick Thoughts from Early in the Blazer Game

I am not particularly surprised that Oden caught a couple of quick fouls. That is just the refs saying welcome to LA.

Portland is jacking up too many jump shots, and the ball really isn't moving. Once it gets into the hands of either Outlaw or Aldridge the whole arena knows a shot is going up. If that is going to be the case, Portland doesn't have a chance in this one.

I haven't seen enough to comment on the defense yet.

Look for another, more in depth post later.

More on Kittys.

So, a comment on my last post reminded me something. I posted about our new kitty a little while ago. But I forgot to tell you wonderful readers that we got another one. Specifically, we got Misha's sister since nobody else was going to take her. I couldn't stand the idea of having her go feral, or be turned over to the county shelter. We have a good shelter, but they are very full.

So we have two kittys now. We (really, I) named the new one Sierpinski, though we often call her Sierpi for short. They have similar coloring patterns, except that Sierpi is black with white (it took me three tries to spell "white" right there. Not typos, just three wrong spellings...) instead of grey with white. 

Anyway, here are some photos of the two kittys. It is kind of tough to get a picture of just Sierpi on her own.

538

Astute, politically savvy readers know the meaning of the number 538. They also know the importance of 270. For those that might be a little behind in their high-school civics 538 is the number of electoral votes for a presidential election, 270 is magic number to move to White House.

I have been watching this election shape up for a long, long time. I may not be the political junkie that some of you out there are, but I find presidential politics to be darn interesting. In furtherance of that, and with a healthy thanks to my boy Paul, I have been cruising around a pretty awesome new site.

Some of the numbers there are pretty encouraging for someone of my personal leanings. But more interesting for me is that nobody in the news seems to be looking or talking about the numbers in this much detail. Now, I am not a statistical genius. In fact most of my knowledge in statistical analysis comes from a few college classes a growing love affair with in-depth statistical analysis in a sports context. That said, based on my somewhat limited knowledge, the methodology here looks quite solid. I understand sports announcers not digging into SABR type numbers. Most viewers don't know what to do with honest statistical analysis, and it is too tough to explain. But here, the people that watch MSNBC, or CNN are obviously fairly well informed, but nobody references numbers this in depth. Instead they use one or two polls to give them a jumping off point. It seems to me that honest, hardcore, statistical analysis of an election should have a place in the media. Alright, enough ranting about the statistical illiteracy of the populace, I do enough of that when I am talking about sports.

Small Personal Update Space:

My life is 90% boring, and I like it that way.

I just finished reading The Center Holds. It was pretty good. Not quite in the league of The Brethren, but good. I am about to start on Democracy Reborn. Let there be no doubt that I am a dork...

Only new music lately isn't that new, but if you haven't listened to Band of Horses, you should probably fix that, lest your life seem empty and grey.