When you're about to play the Golden State Warriors, why not try everything out in practice?
The Portland Trail Blazers traded out the basketball for a little dodgeball in preparation for Saturday night's game.
“I thought we had a really good practice yesterday,” said Mason Plumlee. “I thought guys played hard, guys were into what we were doing, what we were trying to get done. It was a very productive practice.”
After going hard for almost an hour, the team swapped out the basketballs in favor of another inflatable playground sphere: dodgeballs. After accomplishing what they needed to in terms of their preparation for Saturday night’s game versus the Warriors at Oracle Arena, the Trail Blazers players and staff split up into two teams for a competitive dodgeball battle.
“The facility was right, I thought it was a good team event, I didn’t think anybody could get hurt,” said Trail Blazers head coach Terry Stotts. “It turned out pretty well. And the thing is, they had the balls here. When I saw the gym I thought ‘Well, it would be cool if we could play dodgeball’ and then it turned out they had the balls. It worked out.”
The game was taken pretty seriously by most.
“It was fairly legit,” said Stotts. “I don’t think there was a lot of cheating going on. We had to adjust the rules as the game went on, but by the second game everybody pretty much knew what was going on.”
This is somewhat of an unusual tactic but it may have also worked to bring the players together. We'll see how they do tonight.
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