A bad quality pic I took from my seat I finally got to go to my first Blazer game of the season last night. It's always exciting going to watch the Blazers in the Rose Garden Arena. The fans here really have no other major sports teams to root for, so pretty much everyone supports the Blazers. The game I was at last night was the 90th consecutive sell out at the Rose Garden, and that goes back to last season. that's a pretty clear sign of the support for this team even without the appearance of several of the Blazers star players who are out for long periods of time due to a laundry list of injuries.This has to be the absolute worst season injury-wise I have ever experienced. Let me try to remember exactly how it happened.

The very first injuries came in preseason. After drafting Jeff Pendergraph, and Australian Olympic point guard Patrick Mills, they both went down from hip surgery, and  Ouch, there goes the season. a broken foot respectively. Each was expected out a month or two and are actually both back as of a few games ago. Anyways, next to go was our starting small forward Nicolas Batum out of France. I love Nic so it was tough seeing him have shoulder surgery just a couple days before the season opener. He is yet to return. A good couple weeks into the season our sixth man, and top scorer off the bench Travis Outlaw had the first of many freak incidents. During a game he simply planted his foot to change directions and broke a bone in his foot. Out for several months, yet to return. Next up I think was Greg Oden. It's hard to keep track of exactly the order these all happened. But Greg's injury was another freak accident. Basically he planted his feet to rise up for a block, and his knee cap fractured and dislocated. This was probably the freakiest of the injuries because it didn't look like anything happened. All Greg did was plant his feet and jump, yet somehow his knee was stressed or something. This has been the worst injury of the season, both because he is an important piece to the Blazers on both the defensive and offensive end, and because he is out for the remainder of the season. At this point I thought the worst had to be over. How could it get worse than this? Well that question was answered. Our backup center Joel Przybilla that was really our only big body left, went down in a similar fashion to Greg Oden. His was diagnosed with a ruptured patella tendon and a dislocated patella. He is out for the season, and at his age this could potentially be a career ending injury. I hope it isn't but it's a possibility. Moving along, a couple weeks later Rudy Fernandez--another big time scorer off the bench--began having back problems. He is yet to return. Besides those relatively major injuries, Steve Blake is currently out after being hospitalized with pneumonia. Branden Roy, the leader of the Blazers is playing with a tweaked shoulder. And last but not least, LaMarcus Aldridge, the Blazers starting power forward, has a nagging ankle tweak that has caused him to miss a few games this season.
 
 Here's a slightly out of date recap:
 
 Przybilla is also injured but not shown here.

 Another pic from my seat
Wow. I thought that injury list would never end. Anyways despite all those terrible problems, the Blazers are still winning games. I don't know how they are doing it but they have won several tough match-ups after our key players have gone down. I don't know how long they can keep this up but it's nice while it lasts. Whatever happens, Brandon Roy has to stay healthy. If he does he will make the All-Star team again this year for the third consecutive time. the only year Brandon didn't make the All-Star game was his rookie year, which in place he won the rookie of the year award, so I think he's just fine with that.

 Dude! Freakin' Doug E Fresh was there!  :P Anyways, back to the game I got to go to. It wasn't great. The Blazers lost it but put up a good fight right up until the end. It's OK that we lost though because every time the Blazers score 100 points or more, everyone at the game gets a free chalupa from Taco Bell. So yeah, got myself one of those. Oh, hey. Another weird thing that happened that was totally awesome: Doug E Fresh was totally there. He even got on the mic and did some beat-boxing. That was pretty awesome. It was kinda sad though because the game started up again while he was in the middle of beat-boxing and they cut him off. But dude! Doug E Fresh!

Well this turned out to be more of a Blazers injury report than a blog about the game I saw. But since we lost, I would rather not talk about it. I shot a video of Doug E Fresh on my phone but you can't really hear anything so it's pretty useless. Crap, I have to tie this into video games somehow... uhhh, I'm gonna go play as the Blazers in NBA 2K10. Maybe there I can force the team into a win.   :P
 
Peace out ya jive turkeys!