Welcome to the first edition of Showtime, my new column.

There, I said it; my obligation to discuss anything aside from the basketball stuff itself is complete.

The subject of this article is the Portland Trailblazers. Though I've watched them on and off this season and for years before that, I took the time to watch them more closely a little while ago when they played the Raptors, and I have a few things to say.

If you are even passingly familiar with Portland, you know the first words out of my mouth are going to be "ZOMG, Brandon Roy!" I'd have gone for something more eloquent and maybe avoided the 'ZOMG' if I thought the English language was sufficient to describe my shock what Roy was doing, but it's not and so I didn't.

Brandon Roy deserved the Rookie of the Year award last year; everyone knows that. The inaugural season of the '06 draft class really wasn't a stunner, but even then Roy stood out and this season he's simply writing the next chapter of what appears to be a very good career under development. Roy was the reason Toronto lost to Portland; he was the one who kept them in the game while Toronto was dominant for three quarters; and he led the charge in the fourth, even in the last four minutes of the game when he only appeared on the stat sheet for a couple of rebounds and a pair of missed shots.

I think what strikes me most about Roy is how well he moves both with and without the ball. Off-ball, he's a little Rip Hamilton, constantly challenging his defender to stay with him, snaking around screens, dive-cutting and otherwise making a nuisance of himself. He flashes to a spot long enough to receive a pass and then if he doesn't get it, he's gone. He doesn't stay still very often which is great for Portland and awful for everyone else.

Besides this, he moves well WITH the ball which is also important because he handles it pretty frequently. A corollary to his movement is that he rarely turns the ball over; Roy's sitting at a Turnover Ratio of 7.8 through 27 games. That's immense for Portland. Portland's sitting at 29th in the league at pace so efficiency on their possessions is even more critical because they just don't get that many chances compared to, say, Denver, Indiana or Golden State. They're 9th in team TS% and eFG%, 10th in Assist Ratio and 13th in points per 100 possessions, to give you an idea of where they stand league-wide. They can and do score often and very efficiently.

This all starts with Roy. He gets about 23 of Portland's 92 possessions per game or just around a quarter of Portland's possessions, but if you're familiar with possessions, you understand this is just an indicator; he touches the ball much more often than just a quarter of the time, advancing the ball up the floor, starting dribble-penetration that leads to a kick-out and a swing pass, etc. He's constantly involved in the offense, whether it be by initiating it through his dribble-drive or taking a shot from off-ball movement or any other means.

Against Toronto, even when they put Anthony Parker on him, the Raptors simply couldn't keep him out of the lane. And then there was "the Move," which the announcers compared to MJ's overrated "switch to the left" move from the 1991 Finals.

For the life of me, I can't figure out why people care so much about that move; it was a basically uncontested layup and a superfluous use of his left hand. He jumped really high and then thought Perkins was coming over so he switched. Roy's move, for my money, was much more impressive because he actually, you know, worked against defenders.

It started on the right wing; he jab-stepped a bit, then drove hard left, stopped on a dime and crossed up Anthony Parker around the circle, went right, then left to get around Kris Humphries, then switched to the left hand to finish on the opposite side of the rim as Chris Bosh came flying over to try for the block. It was ridiculous; it was amazing. I watched it happen, saw the replay, watched it over and over again on YouTube, and I am still having difficulty believing it happened.

Roy has handles, poise and can finish in traffic, and this was a beautiful example.

I mentioned poise; this may actually be Roy's greatest attribute.

The thing that was most noticeable about him during the game was that he never seemed to be in a rush; Roy was always under control, knew what he was doing, got where he wanted to go. That is a significant trait in a player, most especially in one so young as he. This poise is ultimately what led to that ridiculous switch-handed layup maneuver since he didn't force things, he just took them in stride, reacted, forced the D to react to him and then took what they gave him. That skill, that poise under pressure, well, that is going to serve him admiringly.

It reminds me of a Gene Hackman speech from the movie 'Unforgiven,' the bit where he's talking about how the best gunfighters are usually the ones who are patient, drawing only as fast as they can to get a good shot instead of going so fast that their aim is terrible. That, of course, led to the crazy shootout at the bar at the end of the movie. My point?

Brandon Roy is Will Munny.

I feel like Bill Simmons, having said that. I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad one so we'll just move on... This is not the first time I have noticed this trait in Roy; he's showed it every time I've watched him. In fact, he's basically the polar opposite of players like his teammate Travis Outlaw or even guys like Corey Brewer and Al Thornton in this regard which is probably why he's more successful. Once those two slow it down a bit, they'll be really good but Roy? He's already really good.

OK, enough about Roy. The other guys that really stood out to me in that game were LaMarcus Aldridge and Steve Blake. I would mention Martell Webster, but I've always been aware that he was a particularly good shooter and an underrated athlete so he didn't really stand out so much as do what I expected.

I've been keeping track of Blake since he was drafted and, aside from a poor showing as a Milwaukee Buck, he's been a pretty good player. Good shooter, good handles, good passer, excellent sense of when to push the action and when to pull back... He'll never threaten for a place on the All-Star team, and he's pretty weak on defense but his offensive value is enough to keep him around for 20-25 minutes as a backup player or a short-timed starter which seems to be his role in Portland (he's started all but three games). He shot well; he got into the paint a bit; he used his passing ability... He functioned very well in Nate's system and looks to be a really good fit.

LaMarcus Aldridge

Aldridge is a bit of an enigma.

He looked terrible against the Raptors, and yet he somehow managed to put up 15 and 7.

Understand before I comment, it was his first game back from having a boot on his ankle and following a 5-game absence, so he was understandably tentative. That said, he's never been a stunningly aggressive big man even this year; he's terrible at drawing fouls (DrawF of 11.8% this year, 62% of his attempts are jumpers, a miniscule .276 FTA/FGA), and he was very, very soft against Toronto.

He took mostly turnaround and/or fallaway jumpers from the high post, and the free throws he drew (only two, both coming from the same possession) happened when he ran the floor, caught a mostly open pass and went up for a dunk only to get hacked pretty hard. He split the pair (which is really irrelevant because he's generally a very good FT shooter for a big man and is at nearly 75% on the season so far).

He actually defended Chris Bosh pretty well; the mobility was there on defense, he was slip-stepping and keeping up with Chris as well as anyone can. His help D was sort of unnoticeable; not so much that he wasn't helping, but it didn't stand out as neither good nor bad, just average to mediocre.

The area in which I was most disappointed in Aldridge was not his offense, however; it was his rebounding. He was so lazy, it hurt. Aldridge spent 90% of his minutes more than 15 feet from the basket hovering in a spot and not moving. This was most noticeable when he was weakside, where he simply failed to battle for position, letting Humphries, Bosh or whomever was on him stay between him and the basket at all times while he left his arm up and stood still. It was perhaps the most incredible display of weak work ethic I've ever seen. Although he looked active on D and active on offense, his rebounding was so poor... There is absolutely no justification for that kind of play. This is the reason he has an anemic rebound rate of 13.3 this year, a step back from his rookie rate of 13.9. He's a bad rebounder because he doesn't use his body properly. Most of his rebounds were accidents that resulted from long shots (Toronto took the bulk of its shots from past 15 feet in all four quarters).

That was really disappointing to watch, though it explained much. LaMarcus has an incredible amount of talent, but either he's a lazy fool (which doesn't mesh well with the rest of his night) or he simply doesn't understand how to properly rebound the basketball. A third option might be that the plays being diagrammed are forcing him out there so I don't want to ignore that possibility, but you're talking about a guy who plays regularly at 5 which means he should be in the golden triangle of rebounding more often than not.

Portland as a team has the third-worst rebounding rate in the league and is outrebounded on a nightly basis by 3.1 boards, 3.0 of which come on the offensive glass. The Blazers desperately need to control their defensive glass because they are giving new shot-clocks to their opponents and extending their possessions which is part of why they are 25th in the league in DRTG at 105.2 points per 100 possessions.

I think that if Nate really wants to fix this, then he might start working on some simple zone rebounding schemes. I mean, simply putting the tall guy in the paint will increase their rebound numbers, and that's just not happening right now. Obviously, because of various rules, Aldridge can't just hang out in the paint all day but when he sees a shot go up, he and the other two frontcourt players need to be crashing the glass while the backcourt protects against transition offense if the other team gains possession. Rebounding is a HUGE problem for Portland.

The Team

Portland is an exciting team to watch; they may have a crappy pace in general (they're second-last in the league at a snail-like 91.9 possessions per game), but they're an efficient team. Fourteenth in the league in ORTG and 9th in TS%, these guys put the ball in the basket. They shoot 46.5% from the floor as a team, and they merrily bomb away from downtown, shooting 37.8%. You can thank Webster, Blake and James Jones for that though Jones has only played in 15 games for Portland this year. On top of those players, who are all shooting 39.1% or better, Roy and Jack are shooting 34% from downtown, so it's clear that Portland can shoot from outside. You simply cannot leave them. When they run Blake, Roy and Webster together, it really opens the floor up. Next year, assuming (and praying for) a healthy Oden, this team is going to be terrifying. Right now, they're enjoying some success that doesn't really match up with their true caliber, but they have a very scary foundation.

Portland opened the season with a bad start that EVERYONE expected, going 5-12.  Since then, they've rattled off ten straight victories.

To give you an idea of the MEANING of that streak, I'll introduce you to their Sagarin rating; Portland is ranked as having the 4th-toughest schedule in the league so far. Their winning streak doesn't really reflect this and has mostly consisted of them beating up on struggling teams while playing at home. But hey, everyone has to start somewhere, and right now Portland's sitting at the 8th seed with a 15-12 record. Of note, they are 12-3 at home, and they were 5-3 there before the streak.

Will it last, though?

My thought is that no, Portland won't keep winning this much. That winning streak is, as I just noted, largely the product of an easy schedule that was 70% home games.

Moreover, their differential (points for/points against) is -1.4; you generally don't maintain a winning record with that kind of number. To give you a loose idea, last year, there was only one team in the league with a differential under +0.0 to win more than 42 games and that was Miami at 44 games, playing in the South-East division. It's a little foggier than that, but generally speaking if you're letting more points up than you're scoring, you're losing a lot, by definition.

Maybe a more accurate depiction of the unstable nature of Portland's winning ways is the RPI stat, relative percent index. The formula, taken from basketball-reference.com, is 25% team winning percentage, 50% opponents's average winning percentage, and 25% opponents's opponents's average winning percentage. Here you're getting a look at the kind of teams you're playing, how much you're winning, that sort fo thing. RPI predicts Portland as having a 12-15 record right now, instead of 15-12. This is a winning percentage of .444.

You can go another direction and look at the differential through the Pythagorean method. Pulled off of Kevin Pelton's stats primer over at the Seattle site on NBA.com, the formula for expected wins is 2.7 * Diff + 41. That gives Portland an expected final record of about 37 wins (37.22). Thirty-seven wins would be a winning percentage of .451 which meshes pretty well with Portland's RPI.

Beyond this, we can look at an analysis rooted in the four factors:

1) eFG%

Portland's 9th in the league in eFG% and is giving up an eFG% of 48.9%.

This is a great start; they're scoring well and despite their low defensive rating, they're not giving up even an equivalent eFG%.

2) Turnovers per Possession

Portland has recorded 399 total turnovers so far and has played through approximately 2496 possessions for a TO/POSS of .159. This would have been 16th in the league last year, tied with Miami. Detroit led the league at .135.

Although this number doesn't at all describe type or timing of the turnovers, it is a good measure of frequency, and while Portland isn't winning any awards, they're also not throwing the ball away so much that volume is an issue which is an area for improvement but not as critical as some others.

Their opponents? Portland's already posting a team TPG of 14.8 against 13.2 for their opponents. OppTO/POSS is .143. Forcing turnovers more often would help them, but this is something you could have expected from their abysmal ranking in DRTG. While Portland is only 1.7 removed from the 15th-ranked team in DRTG, they are 13.6 removed from Boston at the top spot. They're just not very good defensively.

It hurts a bit that they're not playing their shot-blocker (Przybilla) more often and that they run Steve Blake at the point for 25 mpg. In terms of +/-, Przybilla is having a very significant -7.5 impact on defensive points per 100 possessions and Opp FG% is dropping by 3.4% when he's on the floor. Those numbers aren't exactly perfect indicators of defensive impact especially at 21.3 mpg, but Portland could stand to improve their interior defense and Przybilla's posting an RbR of 19.3, which would also help their other issue.

I diverge; team turnovers aren't a major issue for Portland, but they aren't forcing enough of them on the other team. This is not to say they should spend more time picking lanes and trying to go Iverson-esque on their opponents because that's usually fruitless; rather, they need a more coherent defensive system (or a more effectively executed one).

I used (FGA + .44(FTA) + TO)-ORB to get possessions.

3) Offensive Rebounding Percentage

The formulae here are:

ORB / (ORB + oppDRB) and DRB / (oppORB + DRB).

Portland's rebounding factors are .251 and .695. Both areas need improvement; the offensive end of this suggest that the Blazers are in the bottom third of the league in terms of offensive rebounding and are abysmal on the defensive glass. I mentioned the offensive rebound rate of 25.1 earlier, as well as its corollary, the defensive rebound rate. Portland is 21st and 29th, respectively; they are a terrible rebounding team.

4) Free Throw Rate (FTM/FGA)

Offensively, Portland's free throw factor is .228 and .196 defensively, which meshes with the fact that they foul less frequently than their opponents. I don't believe that to be a positive thing, frankly; if they were fouling more often, it might be indicative of more aggressive defense and rebounding which would reflect better effort on their part on that end of the floor.

.228 was good for bottom 5 in the league last year; Portland needs to get to the line more often. This goes back to Aldridge being soft on offense and most of the rest of the team being comprised of shooters. Last year they were 16th in the league at .241; Aldridge doesn't do as well at getting to the line as even Zach Randolph, which is depressing.

Again though, he's young and so is the team in general, so harping overmuch on what he does not yet do is premature. His passive preference for turnaround jumpers is worthy of concern and merits significant attention from his coach, but Portland still looks like a really promising team once they get one other player on the squad besides Roy who can be "that guy." A healthy Oden might just be that player since he'll spend pretty much every minute he's on the court in the paint or in transition.

In fact Oden, even if he were to be "only" a more athletic version of Przybilla, will solve many of Portland's pressing issues if he gets and stays healthy. He's a huge interior presence who hits the glass and protects the rim, and he's efficient around the basket where he'll draw lots of fouls going for tip-ins, short hooks and power moves. If he happens to be anywhere near as good as people hope he can be, Portland suddenly doesn't really have any of the problems I've been discussing. This is why I said they have a really terrifying future. If Oden manages to replicate what Dwight did in his first and second years, even if that's his absolute ceiling, Portland's potentially a top 5 team in the league next year. Then, Portland's biggest worry becomes cap managemenet in order to maintain their roster and infuse talent as appropriate to fill in gaps.

Conclusion

All in all?

The Blazers are playing beyond themselves at the moment and enjoying the fruits of their particular schedule and likely won't maintain the 45-, 46-win pace at which they're presently playing. They will probably end up in the 37- to 41-win range.

But they are fun to watch; they have some good young talent; and they have a really exciting future. Definitely a team to keep an eye on. They have many  areas in which they could improve, and if they manage to do so over the course of the season, they may actually be better this year than some of the indicators are showing (e.g. their RPI and differential-based projections).

The team is in the middle of the longest winning streak the league has seen this year (and of course, now I've cursed them) while their talent is starting to develop, and they aren't even playing the #1 overall pick they just selected in the recent lottery draft. Additionally, if RPI and what-not bear out, they may be adding [i]another[/i] lottery pick to their team come June.

Can you imagine Portland featuring Roy, a healthy Oden, Aldridge, Blake and the others and maybe, oh, I don't know...

Kevin Love or Chase Buddinger or maybe even Donte Green or someone? Devon Hardin, maybe? Chris Douglas-Roberts?

In any case, it's an exciting time to be a Portland fan.