Portland Trailblazer game for Anth's birthday

So, last August one of Anthony's birthday presents from Amy was that he could pick a Portland Trailblazer basketball game to go to.  The obvious choices were Orlando to see JJ Redick, Miami to see LeBron James and Dwayne Wade, Lakers to see Kobe or Oklahoma to see the SONICS, we mean old Sonics and Kevin Durant.  We went with the Sonics... umm "Thunder"...

Finally 7+ months later, we went to Portland for a long weekend.  We noticed Sonic fans all over the arena dressed in Sonic gear.  This was a great t-shirt, forget what the front said, but these guys were getting thumbs up signs all night.  

Instead of a flying blimp like key arena had, there was a car/blimp.  It was pretty cool and dropped off free stuff for fans.  Unfortunately we didn't win anything.  

Kevin Durant and Nick Collison warming up before the game.  Amazingly enough after doing a bit of research, it was found that Collison makes 13.27 Million dollars this year.  Yep, the NBA is broken.  No offense Nick!

Now, who doesn't appreciate a Captain Mo ad up in the rafters?  That is a nice touch Rose Garden!

Lamarcus Aldridge has become a beast for Portland this year.  He finished with over 30 points and really dominated.  

We would not normally put pictures of the cheer leaders on the blog but these girls were doing aerial tricks and flips all game.  So props to them.  They weren't the actual cheerleaders, they had some other name... kinda like drill team instead of cheer squad.  The actual cheerleaders were lame and not so good...

Weak sauce mascot.  What a Kitty cat has to do with a Trailblazer, we won't ever know.  His name is Blaze and he's supposed to be a "Trail Cat"... but Amy liked calling him the Rip City Kitty.  Rip City is a nickname for the Rose Quarter/Garden... but really has no real reason for existing, similar to the "Trail Cat"... and you wonder why Oregon has no NFL or MLB team... they are TOO LAME!

Jump ball.  Nice picture Amy!

Portland couldn't compete with the exception of Aldridge who has double digits in the 1st quarter.  

Durant started the game on fire.  He hit shot after shot and OKC got up big.  

Get that weak crap out of here.  How great if a shot is this?

Anytime the referees needed to go to instant replay, secret service like agents came out to make sure security was top notch.  Look how intimidating they are!  Ooooooh, I'm so scared!

The owner of the Trailblazers is Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.  His guest tonight was in all black....none other than legendary comedian Dan Aykroyd.  

Brandon Roy is slowly coming back from knee injuries and played sparingly tonight.  

Former Sonic guard Nate McMillan is the coach for Portland.  He always wears fancy suits and is quite angry and agitated most of the game.  He ended up getting a technical foul for arguing a call.  

As the game went on, Kevin Durant kept shooting and the shots stopped falling.  He (pictured with a towel on his head) ended up with decent stats but missed 10 three-point shots.  

James Hardin got hot and kept OKC in the game.  Tough to see in this picture but Marcus Camby the Blazer forward has eyes on that ball and potential rebound.  

This free throw was one of Brandon Roy's only points.  He finished with 4 pts total, all on free throws.  

We had to get a shot of the "Birthday Boy" at halftime with players warming up in the background.  It's a super close up shot because we'd only brought our zoom lens and Anth could only get 3 rows away for the shot... still a good one though!

It was an awesome weekend getaway, our last trip before X-day.  More about the rest of the trip in a separate post.