If they had amassed this record through a more even W/L distribution throughout the course of the season I'd feel better about the team. But because they built it up quickly during the beginning of the season and then mostly sucked for all of 2014 I can't say I'm impressed with what they accomplished. Prior to the start of the season I saw us as a one-and-done team, and they'll definitely fulfill my "statistical" expectation. But they haven't met expectations when it comes to how they play, and that is far more important to me than fulfilling the one-and-done.
It was a good regular season, happy we made the playoffs, now we need to play the games. We're not favorites and even just being competitive would not be considered failure but I would like us to give our best effort, I want to see our best lineups, I want to see us build on the lessons and acheievements of the regular season, I want to see us play as a team defensively, be able to make adjustments defensively, do our thing on offense and mold into the right formation, if we do so and lose, I would applaud Houston and get ready for next year but If we do this we can beat Houston or any team. If we don't do this it'll be a failure, at least in specific areas.
Losing in the first round has been Blazers basketball for the last decade+. Sorry, anything less than that is less than acceptable to me at this point. We have 2 all stars, we shouldn't be aiming so low.
2 all stars. We have the ability to get out of the first round, so yeah, I'll be really disappointed if we don't. I don't care about the new players, we have a good squad with core players that have been here a while. Every close loss we experienced in the end of the season, I hope they learned from and translate that to playoff wins now.
I treat the playoffs as the 'second season'. The first season started off great, then fizzled for a while with some minor injuries, then picked up a bit. Overall, a very successful season when compared to pre season expectations. Because of the inconsistency of the first season, it's hard for me to solidify my expectations of the second season. I'd like to see the first round matchup, the injury reports, player matchups, and consider each team's recent performances before getting my expectations up too high. Of course, regardless of expectations, my hopes are always sky high, so there's that.
That's how I look at it to. I'll even take it one step further by saying if we don't get out of the first round we might want to look at upgrading our SG position or maybe seeing if Deng might be available and willing to sign long term.
Yeah, you sing this song regardless of what happens. You've been singing it for a while now. Still haven't heard where this upgrade is suppose to come from.
This season has been a huge success. That doesn't change even if we don't make it to the second round. If we didn't make the playoffs it would be fairly certain that we'd be having a LMA fire sale because he would want out of here. You trade away LMA and Lopez would be thinking about going elsewhere when his contract is up. The franchise is better for making the playoffs. This 2nd round or it's a failure is bullshit.
No it isn't. We've been here several times. I remember the first time with Roy and Co we made the playoffs. I was SUPER pumped, we had won 54 games, I cleared my calendar that day and was looking forward to the playoffs and we laid a big fucking egg and the summer sucked.
This is the first time that this coach and this GM have made the playoffs with the Blazers. You can't put past records and disappointments on them. And if summer sucked because of a couple of basketball games it wasn't that much of a summer anyways.
Saying this team is/isn't a failure is philosophical. We are now in the playoffs, we want to win this right now, one game at the time, playoffs baby.
Sure you can. Franchises get labels and they supercede GMs and head coaches. Our label right now is we can't get out of the first round of the playoffs.
I know. This starting five keeps getting bounced in the first round. I'm sick of it. Blow it up, Neil!
It's posts like this that make me think you don't actually follow basketball, and just use this site to promote your IGN posts to get pagecount.
First half of the season I was on cloud 9. Second half of the season I fell back down to the ground. Making the playoffs makes the season a success, IMO. Winning a playoff series would make the season special.
