Boy I was stoked for the begining of the season, ready to finally see the newGreg Odenand all his improvement. That is until the refs and the rockets made him ineffictive to even get a shot off on the offensive end. For real, I watched every single Oden foul multiple times and there were too many calls, I think about 3 of them, where the refs whistled him for ... being 7'0" and 270 lbs. seriously, how does Oden get a foul becauseAaron Brooksforgot he couldn't run through him on defense, I watched that one about 5 times and if that had been Brooks running into Amare or Bosh, there is no way there's a foul called. It wasn't a screen, that's too obvious, that it shouldn't need noting. that one just baffled me.

Besides that, Greg didn't get any calls on the other end either. I didn't know it was ok for defenders to hack at your arms now. regardless of whether you're shooting. Seriously, I don't even live in Oregon or the Northwest. I live in Florida and that was quite odd. Considering if the Blazers did that, it was a foul. And they were the home team?!? That was just odd. Maybe the refs have rust, or they forgot to study up on the game in the offseason.

Not only was Greg open a few times but it seemed like athough it was made clear at half time that they weren't going to run plays for Greg for the rest of the night, partly because Oden couldn't hold the ball and partly because he was getting thwacked everytime with no recourse.

What I did see and what is the most important thing for the Blazers (atleast for this season) was a dominant and imposing Greg Oden putting on a swat fest, he had a block at the begining of the game the refs erroneously called a goaltend, that ball was just getting to it's peak when he smacked it's you-know-what to the mid-court. However the refs may have given him a make-up block when he may have either pinned one against the back board or goaltended by hitting it after the ball made contact with the back board. I'll chose the first, for obvious reasons.

Anyways, Portland needs to figure out that Greg should be taking atleast 10 shots a game, that's 10 close to the basket shots, or 10 higher percentage shots, and if he does that he'll get to the line atleast 5 times. that's 5 freebies. How do you lose doing that? That's a win win situation for Portland and developing their future franchise center. This is a necessity that can not be overlooked.