Who cares about the rest of the season? I mean, really. Sure, we'll find a way to win a few games, and we'll be a scrappy team, blah, blah, blah . . . Oden is done for the year, and maybe for his career. You just can't keep coming back from serious knee injuries. This is a huge blow to the history of this franchise, so I just don't see how trying to cheer ourselves up about this year is even relevant. It's all about winning championships, and our chances just went down the drain.
I'm not sure if for me it's all about winning championships. It's more like life itself; doing your best to improve your situation by acquiring and balancing your assets, then making the best use of those assets. Striving for the championship is great, but if you do the best with what you have, you are also a champion.
I appreciate the sentiment. But the dream we all share is for this team to win an NBA championship again someday, and with Oden we had a real chance. Now, we have no chance.
A) You may not care. But some of us do. By all means, jump ship if you want because our 3rd (maybe 4th) best player got hurt. B) Oden is not done for his career. He's only 21. This may be a setback for a few years, but I see him playing sensational basketball in his prime years, ages 26-32. C) It's not as big a blow as you are makinng it out to be. Our two best players, one of whom is a top 5 talent in this league, are completely healthy. If you saw tonight's game, you saw that we have a star who can carry us against a very good opponent. We can win without Oden.
Not true. Lots of teams win championships without dominant centers (not that Oden was all that dominant). If Roy and Aldridge play like the stars they should be, we can certainly win with a rebounding/defensive center like Joel.
I have to disagree. I have seen no signs that this team can win a seven-game series against teams like the Lakers, Celtics, and Cavs.
Yeah, but I think he's a bit too rosy on this season and too pessimistic on Oden's long-term future. The main problem I see this year is depth, not lack of "star power." Roy and Aldridge and Miller returning to form would definitely make up for Oden's lost production, but it won't make up for the lack of depth. The team actually still has a nice top-five...Roy, Aldridge, Miller, Przybilla, Fernandez (assuming he's back soon, oy) is still quite good talent. And Bayless has looked good this year so far. But after that, boy, the team is in trouble. Blake can provide competent minutes, Cunningham might be NBA-caliber...eh...and that's that.
The team will be fine in the short-term so long as Roy stays healthy. I predict we might even win at a greater rate than when we did with Oden. But we needed this season to incorporate Oden into how the team played-- not play identically to how we played last year. Oden's proven he can't be relied on. Even if Oden comes back 100%, this is another year removed that we may be able to get the team used to playing with a high-level center (which so far, we've seen is not something easy). Unless we somehow trade for Lebron or Kobe or Dwight, or our defense improves by a factor of a million (both equally unlikely) our chances for a championship with our "core" is pretty much shot.
Who said anything about jumping ship? I've been a Blazer fan since day one, and I always will be. I hope you're right, but it doesn't seem likely. He's proven to be very injury-prone, and now for the rest of his career he's going to be playing on two surgically repaired knees. Hey, I'm the biggest Blazer fan in the world, but I can also call a spade a spade. This is a huge blow, and everybody knows it. Roy cannot save us every night. We need a trio of star players to win a championship.
I agree with everything but your last sentence. Roy and Aldridge are better players than you give them credit for. They're only in their 4th season and they're about to explode especially with the more comfortable offense they'll be playing with Oden out. I think we can definitely win a championship by building around Roy. Definitely.
That trio will either be Roy-LMA-Miller, Roy-LMA-Rudy, Roy-LMA-Outlaw, or Roy-LMA-Bayless. Miller is already a star (who will probably be traded for maybe another star.) Outlaw has shown what he can do when given the chance in the 4th quarter. Rudy and Bayless are very young players with HUGE upside. I think we still have a helluva lot of talent.
Make no mistake, Roy's a star and Aldridge is a solid player who may some day become a star. While our offense might be adequate this season (better, even), at the end of the day, you need to play defense to win championships and we just lost a big part of ours today. Joel can't play it by himself.
Oden couldn't do it by himself either. Joel is a fine substitute for Oden defensively. Provided the rest of the team plays as well defensively as it has for most of this season, we should be okay. Let's see what Joel can do with 36 mpg.
Oh I completely agree with you. I was just surprised at how JH approached his article, it wasn't what I was expecting. But I do agree with JH's assertion that it is now very difficult to build the team around Greg, he's shown himself to be officially injury prone and will have missed far too many games in his first 3 years that you would want to count on getting 70+ from him going forward. They're going to have to try and find some kind of front-court player that can compliment Aldridge, preferably a low post scorer of some kind and good rebounding skills. But somebody that can also fit in with Oden if/when he's back and able to play. Bottom line: I see this maybe being a 38 win season if everything goes OK (as in no more long-term injuries, to ANYBODY!) on the plus side maybe we'll find out that Roy and Miller work just fine with each other and that may carry over in to the next season. I'm also pretty encouraged with the work I saw Bayless putting in tonight. He was a huge difference maker in my opinion, even if he did commit some silly fouls and did make some young player mistakes. He was in Brooks' hip pocket whenever he covered him and his jumper looked pretty good.
So 25-36 from here? I think that's a little pessimistic. If Rudy comes back and everyone else stays pretty healthy I think we could go slightly better than .500...somewhere around 33-28 or better for about a 46 to 48 win season.
Ugh. Depth really is a problem. No backup 5 without Greg. No competent backup 4. No backup 3 until Batum gets back in March. No backup 2 until Rudy gets back.
We've already played the softest part of our schedule, so even going .500 from here on out is looking less likely. Secondly you qualified your statement with, "if Rudy comes back and everyone else stays pretty healthy" At this point I don't think you can assume that's a likelihood. Certainly we seem to have used up our allotment of bad luck in the injury department, but would you bet on no more losses from this point forward? I guess anything is possible, but if I'm just taking my hopes and wishes out of the equation, it's clear to me that we are completely decimated in the front court and are now completely fucked if LMA or Joel gets into any kind of foul trouble or if they go down for even a few games; the margin for error just effectively evaporated into a puff.
