After Portland suffered a 30 point home loss to Charlotte Saturday, SG Wesley Matthews chocked his team’s embarrassing effort up to “they’re a playoff team and they’re all NBA players. We didn’t play well. They played great.”  His reply to a followup question, as transcribed by the Oregonian’s Joe Freeman, was a tad more contentious, however.

When a reporter told Matthews he wasn’t sure if it was more appropriate to kill the Blazers for their general ineptitude or dismiss the hideous performance as just one of those nights in a grinding 82-game season, Matthews looked at him sideways and issued a challenge.

“If you kill us, you’re going to look dumb come next game,” he said. “Because we’re going to be a whole new team, we’re going to be the team we’re supposed to be. So you go ahead and kill us. And you’re going to have to come back and see us in the locker room and be like, ‘Aw shoot.’ So I’m just going to save you. Write that. Write it all.”

Portland’s next game happens to be in Miami Monday night against the defending champs, who at the moment, need no assistance from the Fourth Estate in killing themselves.