To answer your question, he was doing quite well. The majority of his points came from his ability to seemingly drive to the basket at will. He also managed to hit a couple jumpers, including a three from the left baseline. He had a really nice double-pump type of layup in traffic. I really like this guy. His ability to beat his man and finish around the basket makes him a special player. Some of his passes were great too. Especially the pass to Pryz under the basket, where he had to thread the needle through two guys, while making the pass from out by the three point line.
The only thing that I can fault him for tonight (and this really isn't his fault because he shouldn't have to be guarding a guy who's 6 inches taller than him) is the way he let Antonio Daniels/Ray Allen score on him. He did a great job while Luke Ridnour was in the game though, which is obviously a much better matchup for him. To be fair, both him and Stoudamire played well enough defense, managing to stick with their guy and get a hand up, but there's only so much you can do when you're giving up that much height. I would have liked to have seen them play Darius at SG more tonight, instead of Stoudamire, who was pretty awful. Darius looked great in the first half, hitting a three from the baseline right at the beginning of the game and then nailing another couple jumpers right after. I really think he should play SG, especially since he's a pretty good shooter now. And at times he played very good defense on Ray Allen, often preventing him from even getting the ball by sticking to him like glue. It was nice to see, since I haven't seen him play in a while.
But yeah, sorry, I guess I kinda went off on a tangent there. Like I said, Telfair's numbers were impressive tonight and he actually did play well too. I like the Blazers' future, as they're actually one of the more entertaining teams to watch in the league, in my opinion. I'd like to see where they can take the young core of players they have right now, and I just wish they didn't have the Zach Randolph/Theo Ratliff contracts to worry about. I guess it could still work out with Zach (even if he is way overpaid) but Theo Ratliff is completely redundant with the emergence of Pryzbillia. This guy has a real presence out there. He looks like he's in way better shape now, and his level of play is incredible when you compare it to two years ago.
