Saturday, July 07, 2007

Some loose ends

Last night I was going to watch the Blazers summer league opener on NBA.com, but the friends with whom I was staying took us out to miniature golf instead. I did catch Oden's monster dunk in the second quarter, and I saw enough of him and Aldridge together to get pretty excited. I know that Oden didn't play that well, but I'm not terribly worried about it. It's disappointing to lose, since our team seems like it should be so superior to all of the other teams from a talent perspective, but oh well. Most teams have all their first and second year players on the roster, and we left off our best guy. I have very little doubt that with Brandon Roy out there we would have been steadier and taken care of business against the Celtics much better. Hopefully Martell Webster and Sergio Rodriguez start performing a lot better, but we'll see.

I also read that Ime Udoka was there, since he'll be talking to other teams as a free agent. I think he's actually pretty important for the Blazers to keep, and because of the intangibles he brings to the team is worth over-paying a little. Granted, over-paying for him wouldn't be that high, but the toughness, the work ethic, and the poise he brings to a young team is vital to our development.

In case anyone is having trouble watching the webcasts of summer league games--if you want to, that is--let me know and I'll help you out.

I don't write about the Oregon Ducks very much, but this story was on ESPN.com today. It's about the Ducks' starting quarterback, Dennis Dixon, and his decision to play for the Braves lowest affiliate this summer instead of working out with the team in Eugene. As a Braves fan I have a little anticipation of the sort of things he could bring to the team eventually, since he's a really great athlete. He's fast, has a huge arm, and shows a knack for making spectacularly athletic plays. But as a Duck fan I'm a little concerned, since he was my choice to be the starting QB again this year. Even though I like him to start, he had a lot of things he needed to work on after last year. Hopefully that works out for both of my teams. We'll see.

I am in Bend right now, having stayed with some friends last night. I came over yesterday to hang out with Gregg Guerin, a really great guy--to quote David Yates, I'm sure--and friend of mine from Wheaton. He was in town visiting his girlfriend, which is a little weird. I had a really late breakfast with them around one o'clock at a great restaurant in Bend, and then we hung out for a few more hours. It was really fun to see Gregg, and quite enjoyable to tell his girlfriend stories from our time at Wheaton before the two of them met. It was also fantastic to get a chance to talk just a little bit about the Knicks and Blazers and the Mets and Braves, since Gregg is from Long Island. I told him my great idea--which is being put out here for the first time--to do some round table NBA discussions with a few representative fans of some of the up-and-coming teams in the league. I know the Knicks aren't really in that group, but Gregg would be a good addition anyway. He would represent the Knicks, my friend Ek would represent the pre-2007 draft sexiest team in the league Bulls, my friend J-Lew would represent the starting-five-forwards Atlanta hawks, and I would represent the post-2007 draft sexiest team in the league Blazers. I would love to find a way to use iChat or something like that to do a sort of around-the-horn video blog, using Final Cut to edit and put our conversation into one video, but I'm not sure if it's possible from each individual's computer capabilities, let alone my software abilities. It's something I want to look into, and since J-Lew and Ek are two of my few readers, I'm sure this will at least bring about a response as to what they think.
The last thing to mention is that my mom called me last night from Arlington, where they just moved, to tell me that there was a big fire. They were preparing, but hadn't had to go yet. As of this morning it sounded like things were more under control, but it made me think about just staying in Bend for another day so I wouldn't have to deal with a big fire.

2 comments:

Lewis said...

That would be pretty sweet. If you could figure out a way to make it happen, I would definitely be game.

Ek said...

Me too. Although I have no idea how we'd go about it. Mark and I have wanted to do a chat on the vt for awhile and haven't really figured it out. Although the lack of attempting to probably hasn't helped.