Marcus Camby shows respect for the Blazers

The 2007 Defensive Player of the Year Marcus Camby takes to the court at the Rose Garden tonight, and he does so with a healthy respect of the Trail Blazers. From his NBA.com blog:

I think Coach McMillan is doing a great job with that young team. They’re winning all these ball games without LaMarcus Aldridge who’s a big part of what they do. And also, it’s without the No. 1 pick Greg Oden, so that goes to show you that with a lot of hard work and belief in your team, you can accomplish anything. Those guys played exceptionally well. I don’t think we took those guys lightly. The night before we had a tough time in San Antonio and they caught us on the second night of a back-to-back and they jumped on us early and had that big lead. We pretty much were never able to catch up to those guys.

[snip]

When we played against Portland the other night, we had hands in these guys’ faces and they still were knocking down shots. They’re a real, real good shooting team so we’re going to have to really protect the perimeter when we play against these guys. They can really light up the stat sheet. We’re probably going to have to mix up our defense a little bit with more man-to-man and some zone to try to throw those guys off balance.

So there you go. According to Camby, the Nuggets will be mixing man-to-man with some zone defense. Will it be enough to stop Brandon Roy, LaMarcus Aldridge and the rest of the streaking Blazers? We'll find out soon enough.