Twice the games eerily featured a weakened Hornets roster realized as Chris Paul lay sprawled in injury.

The second time was somewhat serious keeping Paul out of several games.

Tony Parker went down against the Blazers earlier this year with a similar ailment and missed even more action.

Injury list:

Brandon Roy: Will likely miss a couple more games with a pulled hamstring.

Jeyrrd Bayless: Questionable.

Joel Pryzbilla: Out for season

Greg Oden: Serious rehab. Seen watching basketball buddies run game at 24.

Andre Miller’s anomalous productivity has helped fill Brandon Roy’s vacancy as well as Bayless’. Fortunately for Miller, he will receive serious help defensively with the imminent return of Nicolas Batum.

The Blazers entire second rotation and a rookie strait off the injured reserve have stepped onto the court prepared to play big games this season.

Cleveland (15-7) is on a two game losing streak, dropping games to the upstart western conference teams known as the Grizzles and the Rockets.

Portland may actually have a more talented roster when completely healthy but tonight will be an enduring struggle as the Blazers suit up just 9 players.

The Cavs thought they might have had something going into the season when they acquired legendary big man Shaquille O’neal. So far this season he has averaged a solid 11 points, 7 rebounds and a block per contest.

Lebron James is notorious for collecting triple-doubles against the Blazers and has done so the last two times these teams have met.

Game time tonight is 5pm western, 8pm eastern. The game will be aired nationally on ESPN, as well as in Portland and the NW on Comcast Sportsnet. “The Game” fm channel 95.5 in Portland will be airing play-by-play via the enthusiastic Brian Wheeler.

The Blazers lost yesterday (Monday) in New York due to lack of an offensive presence in the paint and overall team cohesion. The Blazers are now 13-9 having lost the game 94-83, committing 18 turnovers to the Knicks who are 7-15.

A shot at redemption will come for Portland as they visit the Pacers in Indianopolis, Indiana for the seond of their 5-game road trip on Wednesday.

The Pacers are 6-12. Tip-off will be at 4:00 pacific time and the game will be aired on Comcast sportsnet nw channel 37. Radio play-by-play will be provided by 95.5 fm “The Game”.

Loss of a defensive centerpiece can bring a sense of doom and failure to any franchise.Unfortunately for the Blazers (13-8), they aren’t just any NBA franchise. They’re a team that looks more like a unit on M*A*S*H these days, with all their injuries. Oden now will be done for the season, Rudy Fernandez didn’t play last night, LaMarcus Aldridge’s knee is sore and Jerryd Bayless rolled his ankle but refused to skip a game.

That’s not to mention starting small forward Nicolas Batum’s absense, or Travis Outlaw’s, or the less amplified but still missing presence of Arizona star Jeff Pendergraph and Aussie star Patty Mills as bench options.

That’s a total of 6/15 players not able to play due to injury. The Blazers only have 9 guys left who can play ball. Their head coach ran full court drills with them in practice because of this and ruptured his Achilles tendon. Yet things could be worse.

Nate McMillan may be absent from the Trail Blazer’s upcoming 4-game road trip because he is having surgery but assistant Dean Demopoulos is a veteran of this coaching staff and knows well what he is doing. We may even see a little flair from his coaching style over the next 4 games. Being that Demopoulos only has 9 guys to play with expect to see everyone get their burn on. Blazer guards especially will have to display their enduring athleticism as a couple of the bigs (Pryzbilla, Juwan Howard) may struggle to stay in the game for extended periods of time.

Relative to during Steve Blake’s injury last year, this will be Bayless’ time to shine. Jerryd will probably still be the 9th man off the bench, 10th when Rudy gets back into the lineup but he has earned some of Blake’s minutes and will be given a chance to show his stuff over the next few weeks.

The Blazers play tomorrow, Monday afternoon (4:30 western), in New York against the Knicks. The game will be aired on Comcast sportsnet 37 and on the radio at 95.5 fm “The Game”.

So far this season the teams are 1-1 against each other. Both teams winning their home games. Portland’s win came on their season opening game and Brandon Roy scored 42 points in the loss at Houston.

This game will tip off at 7pm western time at the Rose Garden arena in the City of Roses. It will be aired for the fans of the Blazers on comcast sportsnet, nw cable channel 37, and on the radio at 95.5 fm “The Game”.

Retirement reshmirement. Even though Iverson had publicly leaked the news of his early retirement and escape from the Grizzles through his agent, which made breaking news on ESPN’s Sportscenter, he left with a statement implying  that he wasn’t too old to play. Quite a few analysts went on the record to say that AI’s retirement speech read between the lines with Iverson stating that he would return to the NBA, given the opportunity to win a championship, or at least be mired in nostalgia with Philly.

A.I. is near the top of the list as far as great NBA players to never have won a championship. He led the 76ers to the finals against the Lakers in 2001 and scored 42 points in a game 1 victory at LA but then watched helplessly as Shaq dominated against his team en route to a 4-1 finals series victory for the Lakers during their stretch of 3 consecutive NBA championships.

AI may never take it all in Philly but that might not be his concern anymore given the love he is going to feel once back in red,white and blue. The Sixers may even ask Iverson to be the man all over again. Something the Grizzles couldn’t give him. Phillidelphia is 5-14 as of press time and from a business standpoint they needed the shot in the arm that Iverson is able to provide.

AI is 34 but still one of the quickest players in the NBA. His accolades include 10 all-star appearances, 2 all-star MVP awards and a regular season MVP award from ’01.

As a rule Oregonians must find a silver lining to any cloud or else they shall quickly move to a southern state. One is that Greg Oden’s statistical performance was once again mind blowing. He settled for 13 points, 20 rebounds and 4 blocks, drawing 5 personal fouls and forcing himself out of the game in situations where the Blazers needed him.

Defensively the Blazers allowed more than 105 points for the 3rd consecutive night meaning that they had st themselves up for a shootout. Brandon Roy as well as Juwan Howard had impressive performances in the first quarter. Roy scored 14 of his 25 there but then went cold, finishing the game with 9-25 shooting. Had this been a game where Brandon goes 14-25 and scores 35 than the Blazers win a thriller. As it was they lost 107-100 dropping to a record of 12-8, a 60% winning mark.

Rookie Dante Cunningham saw extensive action as a starting replacement for the sore knee of LaMarcus Aldridge. Cunningham made plenty of mistakes with his role, learning much about being a rookie while scoring 6 points and grabbing 5 rebounds.

As offensive production continues to be the bane of this talented and gifted Trail Blazers team it is hard to overlook a night such as Brandon’s in which a single player misses 16 shots from the field. This is not to single out the guy because it is partially to blame that team deference to him that is possibly a little overboard but I have gathered a few stats anyway to highlight when the Blazer all-star is most effective (and least effective).

The first row is in games where Roy has 20 or more FGA (field goals attempted).

Second is Roy and the Blazer’s total performance when Roy shoots between 11 and 19 shots.

The last row shows the same stats for games in which Roy shoots 10 or less times.

(Win-Loss) W   Roy:   Field Goal     Made       Missed

(0-3)             0%                 .447%             30              37

(10-5)           67%               .447%            101            125

(2-0)           100%              .375%               6              10

The Heat’s record has suffered at the hands of stronger opponents lately as they have failed to defend their excellent 7-2 start to the season by going 2-5 since.

The Blazers have had Dwayne Wade and the  Miami Heat’s number over the last two seasons, sweeping both season series and going 4-0.

Now the Blazers look to bounce back from a pair of games played during consecutive nights in which they were humiliated each time.

Both teams are on 2-game losing streaks and will be looking for avengence in what is sure to be an epic game from the opening tip. Said tip-off will begin at 7pm west coast time, 10 eastern.

Television coverage will be on kgw northwest channel 8 and radio play-by-play will be featured on Portland’s 95.5 “The Game”.

To make things really scary for the Nets, their next game will be against the Dallas Mavericks, a team filled with studs and superstars. The Nets may come into that game fired up and not wanting to set the bar for futility but Dallas is unlikely to give any leeway of their own.

An 0-18 start may be inevitable for the New Jersey Nets but they are not without hope for the future. Their cap space going into what some are calling the best free agent class ever (the free agent class of 2010 includes Lebron, D-wade, Chris Bosh, and many more) is very high. Not to mention that their brand new Russian owner, the first ever foreign owner of an NBA team, is a billionaire.

Utah (9-7) continues to roll, now having won 5 of it’s last 6 games and coming within 3 games of the division lead in the closely contested nw.

The Jazz’s night was spectacular as they dominated the Blazers from the opening tip. Carlos Boozer had a game high 26 points and doubled the best Blazer rebounder with 10. Deron Williams’ 15 assists for the Jazz had them jiving from start to finish as he made one spectacular pass after another, throwing alley-oops over and over.

The Blazers seemed uneasy playing without the lead again. Being used to winning should be a good thing but it has hurt this young squad for the second consecutive night as both times Portland has come out flat, relinqueshed a handful of points and collectively lost confidence in their jump shots.

This is what can happen to jump shooting teams. The Blazers have to try to up their points in the paint statistic (they are the worst in the NBA) or ugly games could become a hallmark of this season.

Attacking the basket more often and focusing on scoring in the paint will also create more free throw opportunities for the Blazers who are statistically a strong bunch of free throw shooters. It also won’t hurt the Blazers’ perimeter game to do this but only serve to highlight the outside shooting of Rudy Fernandez, Martell Webster and Steve Blake.