Today, the Trail Blazers will fly across the country to play one game versus the Brooklyn Nets at Barclays Center. It’s a game that was supposed to be played on Jan. 26 at the start of a four-game Eastern Conference road trip before being postponed due to a blizzard (or at least, the threat of a blizzard). And since both teams still have something to play for, the Trail Blazers will board a four hour flight to New York Sunday morning, play the Nets Monday night and they’ll take a four and a half hour flight right back to Portland. Outside of exhibitions played on other continents, it’s about as far as you can travel for one NBA game.
But those flight will be a little lighter than usual, as the team announced today that LaMarcus Aldridge, Nicolas Batum and Chris Kaman will all sit out Monday night’s game to rest various injuries. While the team didn’t say explicitly that all three players would not travel to New York, Amy Schwartz of 750 The Game reported Saturday night that all three would stay back in Portland, which makes sense. No reason to fly cross-country, twice, to watch the game from a bench in Brooklyn. We have plenty of benches here in Oregon.
But those flight will be a little lighter than usual, as the team announced today that LaMarcus Aldridge, Nicolas Batum and Chris Kaman will all sit out Monday night’s game to rest various injuries. While the team didn’t say explicitly that all three players would not travel to New York, Amy Schwartz of 750 The Game reported Saturday night that all three would stay back in Portland, which makes sense. No reason to fly cross-country, twice, to watch the game from a bench in Brooklyn. We have plenty of benches here in Oregon.
