The Official Site of Brandon Roy

Wed, Apr 29th 2009, 08:52

Blazers stay alive with win at Rose Garden

The Trail Blazers lived to play another day, beating the Houston Rockets 88-77 in a tense and physical Game 5 on Tuesday night at the Rose Garden.

But for more than a moment, their season was in jeopardy.

That’s when point guard Steve Blake delivered a simple, to-the-point message that was delivered in his typical straight-forward manner.

“It’s now or never,” Blake said with the Blazers trailing 68-64 in the fourth quarter.

Immediately after that message, the Blazers went on a 15-0 run, salting away a must-win game and forcing Game 6 in Houston on Thursday night.

“They wanted to go back to Houston,” coach Nate McMillan said.

With about eight minutes to play Tuesday, the only place the Blazers appeared to be headed was their Tualatin training facility to clean out their lockers for the summer.

Houston, needing one victory to end the best-of-seven series, had scrapped and clawed its way back from an 11-point deficit in the third quarter. In fact, the Rockets had taken a 68-64 lead when they came out of a timeout with 8:52 left.

That’s when Blake emerged from the huddle, walked onto the court and did a U-turn to face his teammates. Standing near midcourt, he delivered his succinct yet pointed message.

Brandon Roy recalled the moment distinctly. He said it wasn’t delivered in a rah-rah manner, or out of panic. And it wasn’t like it was a great revelation to his teammates.

“It wasn’t any secret,” Roy said. “But as soon as he said it, I walked away and I was like, ‘It is now or never.’ And I decided I was going to do whatever I can to get this win. It was like ‘Let’s go do it.’”

Roy and the Blazers did just that. He scored nine points in the 15-0 run that gave the Blazers a 79-68 lead with 4:49 left. The Rockets pulled as close as 80-75 with 2:14 left, but Blake applied the final dagger, slicing through the lane past 7-foot-6 Yao Ming and scoring on a finger-roll layup with 1:51 left.

Continue reading game recap….