Things have been going really wrong for the Trailblazers all year. A few things have gone right (signing Carmelo Anthony actually worked out, kinda), but lately, the pace of wrong things has only quickened. At this rate, I wouldn’t be surprised if they had to play the last 10 games of the season with only 5 un-injured players, with one of the players being Chris Kaman.
It is too early to tell whether the BTFOG “Big Trade Full Of Garbage” they just pulled off with the Kings is a thing that will go wrong, but unless Wenyen Gabriel is a stud, it’s unlikely to go very right.
Due to the shortage of bodies caused by that trade, as well as the shortage of bodies caused by injury, the door was wide open for Gary Trent to play big minutes and show his stuff. He’s been playing pretty decent minutes for about a month, but with only 8 active players, there was no choice. He had to play. Producing, that’s another matter. But he was going to play. Screw the birthday. Screw the illness.
He ended up playing 36 minutes, by far a career-high if you ignore that ridiculous all-48 game he had at the end of last season. And he ended up scoring 30 points, by far a career-high even if you include that ridiculous all-48 game he had at the end of last season. He saw the door wide open, decided he didn’t want to use it, and stormed through the wall like the Kool-Aid man instead. The Thunder didn’t know what to do with him. The Blazers didn’t even know what to do with him. The only person who knew what was going on was Trent himself, and he wasn’t about to clue other people in.
It took a heroic 8-point final minute for him to get his trip to the mystical Hall Of The Thirty Point Scorers, but his stay there was cut brutally short due to an incident between Marcus Smart and Carlos Delfino (the keeper of the hall).