TRAIL BLAZERS ADDED TO PELICAN STEW

via oregonlive.com

Could Portland Trail Blazers fans smell what Jrue Holiday was cooking? Since his dish was in New Orleans there was competition, just not from the Blazers. The other chef in the kitchen?

The Brow, AD, Anthony Davis.

What they dished up was a spicy gumbo of ‘Get Out Of Here And Go Home.’ Since the New Orleans Pelicans cooked the Blazers, is there more to learn going forward? Like who will be on the team?

Jrue Holiday won’t be a Blazer, but he’s the sort of player missing from the roster, a guy who makes a huge effort look easy. Watching him work does look easy. It’s not.

Which Portland Trail Blazers make anything look easy?

Without taking shots at players, just checking numbers on their wiki pages, Jrue Holiday and Meyers Leonard are about the same age and get paid the same at first glance: $9.213 million bucks.

Then I double checked bleacherreport.com for clarification, which helped explain how that’s possible. It can’t be possible, not with the way Holiday roasted the Blazers on their way out of the NBA playoffs.

The guy dominated the court like the second coming of a decade younger Dwyane Wade. Fun to watch, exciting for his teammates, and making it all look too easy to beat the Trail Blazers. The only upside is if the Pelicans advance past the next round, but that has little to do with the Blazer future.

With the money part checked out, Meyers Leonard still makes the $9.213 while Holiday pulls $25 million. He played like a $25 million dollar man while Leonard barely played. Aside from the skill disparity, they might be the best example of what’s wrong in Portland.

Leonard is easy to cheer for when he gets in the game. He’s funny, does things others don’t, but still comes up short in the sport of professional basketball. Chiseled out of the sort of rock that makes you think, ‘this is what a basketball player looks like in movies,’ Meyers passes the eye-test.

It’s the other stuff that’s lacking, the basketball stuff.

Anthony Davis fails the model beautiful eye-test, but leads in the basketball stuff to the point of asking, “Is this the best player in the NBA?” Watching the big man groove threes makes a good case. He shoots like a machined piston pumping despair from beyond the arc. Is he freakier than Milwaukee’s Greek Freak? What’s for certain is he’s head and shoulders above the Portland’s Bosnian Beast, who he added to the Pelican stew.

The best Trail Blazers future rests in the top image of Zak Collins and Rajon Rondo. There’s the crafty veteran with championship linage slapping a dead ball away from the developing Gonzaga rookie, who then retaliates in a way perfect for the shorter man. He got close enough for Rondo to teach him moves on the court that go far beyond basketball.

Zak sees Rondo approach and gets ready for the traditional angry chest bump and side faced barking guys do to show their displeasure. Instead of the normal spit flecked close up of their conversation, we saw the missing ingredient in the Portland Trail Blazers team recipe: A headbutt to the tall man’s chin.

Anthony Davis might look like he does forehead workouts, but Rondo’s lifted his team, and woke the Blazers.

Professional athletes have played their games all of their lives. They know the dirt and how to throw it because it’s either happened to them, or they’ve done it before and got away with it. The Collins/Rondo dance looked ordinary until the slow motion replay. Then it looked like a jaw jacking punch in the face.

Good sportsmanship aside, and Rondo is a poor example of good sportsmanship here, never underestimate an opponent’s ability to win the inner game.

I hear you asking, “But Dave, these are professional athletes playing kid games, making millions and millions on and off the court. They have access to the best sports psychologists in the world, how can they allow mental games to affect them?”

Ask Damian Lillard how much room Jrue Holiday and The Brow took up in his basketball brain. The only way to shake that nightmare is the Pelicans haunting all the way to the finals. Go Birds.