Game Thread GAME# 15: BLAZERS @ PELICANS - NOVEMBER 19, 2019 - TUESDAY, 5:00 PM, NBATV & NBCSNW

Blazers now #14 in the West and #8 in the Lottery standings....but they are REALLY close to being #5.

 

Good for you. Give yourself a well-deserved pat on the back.

 

I know everything I pointed out was negative, but I didn't mean to imply Olshey has never made good moves, because he certainly has made some fantastic ones. However, his two big summers (2016 and 2019) have been major whiffs.

 

He did this against Whiteside. Not exactly sure how he pulled that off?

 

I just did.

 

So I excluded Dame, CJ, Nurk, Collins since they are on both teams. Also excluded Kanter, Hood.

Aminu, Harkless, Turner, Layman, Curry, Leonard
Whiteside, Bazemore, Hezonja, Tolliver, Melo, Skal, Pau

Weighted by total minutes played on Blazers. Gave Pau & Melo max minutes same as Whiteside.

Weighted Average BPM & RPM from 2018-2019 season (Melo two years).
Last year's team -0.27
This year's team -1.43 (corrected from -1.17 copying mistake)

That's about 7 win difference for an 82 game season.

 

It's certainly no less than what the Pelicans had on the floor tonight. Yet they handed it to us tonight.

Also, I'd rather have Rodney Hood and Zach Collins as our starting forwards than Mo Harkless and Aminu. I think Olshey had a very good summer. Injuries happened and our coach is an imbecile. Olshey gets blame for that too.

 

I'm 100% with you that Collins being hurt is having an impact on the season.

However, Olshey made 5 acquisitions in an attempt to put us over the top and not one of them has been great. No matter how much you may want to blame the constants from the team that got to the WCF, it's the changes (and injuries) that have been the biggest liabilties this year.

 

If you wanna say the transactions in the off season sucked, remember Lillard co-signed all of the transactions this off season. He didn’t demand that the team resign Aminu, Kanter, Mo, or Meyers when we could have done so, and the team would have listened to him. You won’t here anyone here criticizing Lillard for not going to bat for his former teammates, though.

Did Lillard really appreciate, for example, the defense Aminu brought to the team? Or, has his superstar life style thrown off his perception a bit? There has definitely been a shift in his attitude since he got his insanely big contract in the direction of cockiness. His music has changed and is noticeably less humble. He considers himself more of a celebrity now.

I remember Lillard saying “we got better” after many of the transactions had just occurred in the off-season. He didn’t really pay any respect to the departing players during this interview and he dismissed concerns about the talent the team lost with Aminu etc.

it’s not all on Olshey and Stotts. The whole team is responsible for the success of the team, and Lillard deserves some significant blame as the leader of our team for our current woes.

 

He sure did. Lillard was clearly happy by the “improvements” we made.

I understand injuries happen but Zach Collins going down isn’t the difference between the expectations we had for this season if he was healthy and being one of the worst teams in the NBA record wise.

 

So maybe new plan is now to out tank the Warriors?
http://www.tankathon.com/

 

I say this in many threads, and I'll say it again:

I'm not going to pretend like I know what happens behind closed doors. What coaches and players (like Lillard) say to the media after a transaction should always be taken with a grain of salt. I think the likilhood of Dame coming out to the media and saying he thought any trade made us worse is zero, for obvious reasons. I don't know if Dame considers himself more of a celebrity or not, but again, that doesn't matter to me. I feel Dame is a better player this year than he was last year, so him being a constant from a WCF team, I don't think whatever change he has made could be the main reason for the win % to fall that far.

We do agree that all parties involved share some responsibility for the succes of the team; not all posters on here seem to feel that way. In terms of roster make-up, Olshey is responsible for that, as that is his job. There are only two people in the organization above him that I suppose you could add in (McGowen & Jody Allen). If we had proof Dame said he wanted to trade Harkless/Meyers for Whiteside, then I guess we could try and hold him accountable, but I do not have those facts. I do recall Dame saying something along the lines that if he had it his way, the team would never change, but again, I don't know if that is truly how he feels or not.

 

At least someone is...
Just wish Stotts would do it too.

 

I missed the game. Someone give me a run-down of why we lost. Or are the Pelicans that much better than we are?

 

I think your take on Dame is way off. It wasn't his idea to retool the team that just got to the WCF. If you think it was him, where is your proof? I think that if he weren't injured right now and if we were winning these games you wouldn't be bashing Dame. This is how it starts, fair weather fans turning on this team's best player and ambassador.

 

Why didn’t you just record it?

 

We should trade Lillard for fantom player, so CJ can take more shots.

 

Aminu and Harkless being here right now wouldn't change a damn thing. We might be a bit better defensively but we'd have even less assists than we do now and we're already last in the league. The talent you have out on the floor matters. But, so does the game plan. We legitimately don't have one on either end of the floor.