Our (severely undermanned) Blazers have been competitive in almost every game since Oden went down. The (3) games before he went down against Houston were bad losses - the Memphis trashing we took at home, then blown out in Utah, then handily beat by Miami at home. Since the Houston game where Greg went down, the only game we were never really in was at NY. There have been a couple of double digit losses where we collapsed late (Clippers, Cavs) but we were in those games. Did anybody think that we would be 13-9 in the first 22 games w/o Greg? And then 8-5 w/o Greg & Joel? Just as impressive is that even the losses have been competitive.
I was thinking that exact same thing today. We just don't get blown out hardly at all. In fact, I was even wondering where I could go to find a game-by-game listing of our margins of victories and defeats.
I've got a theory -- actually it's not even a half formed hypothesis really -- but I think guys were coasting a little bit on defense (particularly guards and wings) when Oden was behind them wiping out their mistakes, and I strongly believe that there was a real tug of war going on between lots of players on the team as far as their roles were concerned, where their touches were going to come from and just too many bodies squeezed into too few spots. I don't blame Oden for this nor Brandon, LaMarcus, or any other player, I just think there wasn't much foresight on the part of management and the coaching staff for how to juggle all of these competing interests (a lot of young players playing for their next contract, needing development and a more productive Oden shifting the offense from an outside-in, guard oriented offense to an inside-out post oriented offense) and most of these issues are still there but have been pushed back due to the crisis management nature of the current state of the roster -- they're just too damn busy trying to stay afloat so they're not talking/thinking about this much right now.
I think you're right - we need a consolidation trade. Although I don't know about the "coasting defense" theory - I'm not a big PER, or Efficiency #'s guy, but I would guess our defensive efficiency rating was much better earlier in the year when we were healthy. Our offense has been what's surprised me - it's just looked a lot more crisp (Notwithstanding today's game w/no B-Roy) I guess less is more sometimes.
Part of me is concerned that we are beating teams we have no business playing well against, and getting beaten down the stretch by teams we should be beating handily. We are 6-5 in our last 11, with the obvious batch of injuries. Who did we beat? DEN (26-14) by 11 LAC (18-22) by 4 GSW (12-27) by 16 LAL (32-9) by 9 MIL (16-23) by 12 ORL (26-15) by 15 Our losses? PHI (13-27) by 11 LAC (18-22) by 10 MEM (22-18) by 4 CLE (31-11) by 12 (after being tied late in the 4th) WAS (14-26) by 5 (after being tied late) Seems way too schizophrenic for my tastes, and not in keeping with the talent level of our team (such as it is). We're also not executing very well at the end of games, Roy Injury or not. Can that be fixed? I hope so. This season shouldn't be called off yet by any stretch of the imagination.
Schizophrenic is a good way of describing it ... but considering how much trickery and mixing the team has employed in their defenses game to game, and play to play that schizophrenia has probably helped us win some games we shouldn't have; the team is relying on near flawless execution of these schemes to mask the fact that they don't really have any shot blocking or interior D and when an opposing team solves them a little bit then these kinds of losses aren't all that surprising ... especially when those losses are to "bad teams" like the Warriors, the Clippers, the Wizards, the Sixers and Memphis who all possess a lot of athleticism and either scoring bigs or guys who like to get into the lane on dribble penetration (or just play crazy Nellie Ball, which always gives us fits at Oracle). Frankly I just think it's borderline miracle they've been able to pull out some of the wins they have, I wish it wasn't so hard to keep this in mind.
I have to agree with Nik's thoughts of our perimeter players coasting a bit more with Greg in the game. He was one of the better defensive players in the league before he went down, and without him (and now Joel) back there making up for their mistakes they have to make a far better effort.
What it means is pretty simple. Last year and in seasons past we were successful playing NateBall. At the beginning of the season we struggled with adding the new pieces to our team and playing with a true center. Then, the injuries came, and Nate was able to go back to playing NateBall. So no real progress has been made and any real decisions about the future of this team, and the answer to the questions about whether Nate is the right coach for this team have been delayed.
I agree... this is the worst thing about Oden going down for the year. It's just a wasted year from a team development standpoint. It is entertaining and individual players can get better and we can find out about some players that wouldn't have played as much otherwise (Bayless, Pendergraph, Cunningham, Webster), but we are not progressing towards the ultimate goal.
The worst part about this season is that Nate will survive to see another season. We were on our way to combusting and Nate being fired, but the injury bug and our subsequent play since then, has made Nate look good and given him a get-out-of-jail-free card. I was really hoping to see Nate fired and replaced with someone like Adelman.
I don't know what this means, but . . . we won't win 5 straight like we did last year with this same identical record. I bet we will go 2-3 instead.
Andre Miller actually playing with the best available players could have something to do with that. I wish we could have seen him starting alongside Oden.
Exactly. Also- Juwan has ended up being the perfect center for LMA and Roy, like it or not (for now). He's serviceable. He rebounds, does his best to defend his man, and he can hit the outside shot.
I have to say, so long as we make the playoffs, I'm happier with "beat the winning teams/lose to the bad teams" than the reverse. Our problem last season was that we couldn't beat the good teams consistently. This year we're one of the best teams in the league at that. In future seasons, we have to beat everyone but for this year, I'll take what we've been doing. If we pull it out at the end.
