It was the day after Christmas, December 26 and the Blazers had just downed 'Lob City' in a 116-112 win over the Clippers. They sat at 24-5 and were burning the nets down with fantastic 3-pt shooting, offensive execution and heart-stopping buzzer beaters. Winning at a .828 clip had Blazer fans doing double takes at this squad that many a same fan had at a #7/8 playoff seed just two months earlier. Fast forward a month to today. The Blazers are 9-7 since then at a much more pedestrian .563 winning percentage and that stretch has included home losses to the Pelicans (18-25) the 76'ers (14-30) and a road loss to Sacramento (15-28) on top of more expected losses recently to Houston, OKC and G-State. So what has changed? Other teams have lost players to injury but Portland has remained a symbol of consistency albeit there have been bumps and bruises...and a specific finger injury. No one expected the Blazers to maintain their torrid net abuse that was going on earlier in the season but in some cases, it has not only dropped, but dropped significantly. The schedule has become more difficult but many were dismissing that earlier so what else can it be? The defense has actually improved a couple notches in terms of ranking so is it just a Coach-Nate-says-we-just-need-to-make-more-shots thing? The next 4 games are all very winnable but the last time we thought that they lost back-to-back to Philly and Sac. After those 4, then they get @Indy, @Minn, OKC and @LAC before the All-Star break. What do they need to do/fix to get back not necessarily to .853 but improve on the recent .563? HCA is waiting for them if they can find the answer.
Tougher schedule. Fatigue. Players slumping. There's simply no way for guys like Nic and Wes to continue shooting at the clip they were. Wes was unconscious during that win streak. I think teams figured out some of our weaknesses and they're exploiting them. We don't have good perimeter defense, which puts a lot of pressure on our interior defense, so guys like Lawson, Rubio, etc are getting to the rim at will. Dame is struggling worse than I think he ever has. He played some of his best ball last year when we had a pure point guard on the floor with him, but we don't have a pure point guard on the team right now. Mo doesn't look for Dame at all. We probably would have won last night if LA even put up his averages. It was just a bad night all around.
That's not quite true - there were some people that thought it was the "new norm". Of course rational people figured the percentages would regress to career averages, which is exactly what happened. Also, we won a number of "coin flip" games - those coins just happen to be falling on the other face now. In short - early in the season we were playing above our level of talent, similar to that 13 (?) game win streak several years ago, and got lucky with the ball bouncing the right way a few times.
The tougher schedule is a given although when some posters cautioned that the schedule had been quite easy, they were vilified for being trolls, non-Blazer fans or simply not having faith. Players slumping...for sure, especially in comparison to how some (especially Matthews) started out. Once again though, when that was pointed out that this couldn't be kept up the same "troll, non-Blazer fans or simply not having faith' description came out of the woodwork on numerous occasions. Fatigue - True but every team is going through that. Portland has played 45 games. The lowest amount of games played I found in a brief look was a few teams with 43. A number of teams have played 46 so they all should be having fatigue. Then again, if you listen to Mike Barrett, the Blazers are always playing on the 2nd night of a back-to-back while the other team is coming off of 2 days rest. That just can't be true but then again, never let the facts get in the way of a good homer.
agree with most of what was said here but the fatigue is a major role in this recent stretch of games. 7 games in 10 days is no joke for anyone
I certainly agree that is a factor but if every team has played basically the same amount of games, most every team will have gone through a similar stretch so that evens out.
Over the last 17 games, after the 1st quarter we are 5-10-2 with an overall record of 9-8. Are the starters conserving energy knowing they will have to play big minutes?
Every team does that. Our best regular season ever was 90-91 when we started 11-0 and then completely fell apart midseason before streaking at the end to finish 63-19. The 09-10 Suns were similar with a lull midseason and they reached WCF. 10-11 Mavs had a stretch where they went 2-9. We are fine. We are still 5-1 against Indy, SA, and OKC, the top 3 teams in the NBA. We're great on the road, beating GS, OKC, and SA. Yes, we've had a couple bad losses but so has Indy losing the Suns by 24 recently. Also- get this: we have beaten EVERY team we have played besides Memphis and Miami. So impressive.
The law of averages caught up with the 3-point shooting of this team. Unfortunately they didn't get the memo and are still bombing away from deep without any plan B outside of LA post ups. This really is a pivotal moment to see if Stotts is a good enough coach to change things around on offense, or just pray the starters get red-hot again.
Agreed. I was impressed with the early-season offense, but I wasn't quite willing to go as far as calling him an "offensive genius". He did one thing that worked well...for a while. Hopefully he is an offensive genius, but I continue to have doubts. Certainly far better than Nate, but just being better than Nate doesn't even necessarily put you in the "good" category.
Our three point shooting has sucked. Its not that this is how the team is because we aren't even shooting 35% most nights and every 3 shooter on the team is better then that % , some are better by quiet a significant margin. We're in a slump and our offense doesn't look the same, wev just looked tired and disinterested at times. This isn't something that is going to keep happening just like we weren't going to keep shooting 40% as a team from 3. Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk
One thing that bugs me about the Blazers the past few years is how inorganic they play. It's post up Aldridge - sit back and watch. No movement from anyone else. Where's the baseline cutters - people flashing through the paint? They must learn to not be so rigid in their systems and allow for creativity a bit more. All of the players seem to be still far too often - on both offense and defense. If they can add PLAYER movement to the beautiful BALL movement we had earlier in the season - then we may have something special.
Yes, usually in a going through the motions kind of way - on their way to providing Aldridge a clear-out. Where they promptly watch.
Since the rough stretch by Dallas has been brought up more than once, I will offer that Dallas had major injuries. We have not suffered any.
