Just a little thought experiment: Say Nurk never got hurt. Ditto Collins and Hoodie. So we go into the bubble with the team as designed - Nurk Dame CJ Hood Collins __ Trent Jr. Simons etc. Likely we would not have had Whiteside as he was a replacement player. Ditto Melo. So how good would this team have been, how well would they have done?
We'd be a top 6 seed and possibly in the second round. Don't see us being able to beat either LA team even if healthy and with chemistry 4 times.
A full season with Nurk and Collins and Hood would have been nice...especially if we could still have gotten Ariza and Gabriel midseason.
The LA teams would be clearly better than that roster. Denver would probably be slightly better simply because of Jokic. I'd take the Blazers over any other WC teams.
We might’ve won title last year. When Nurk started and we had Kanter, Curry,and Hood off the bench, we were really good. By WCF, we had to play Meyers major minutes. Plus, Dame had separated ribs.
Some times it’s the smallest thing, like what if we had Collins to guard AD. Or what if we had Ariza out there. I think we could have beaten the Lakers fully healthy
I think we would have been the third seed. I really think we are going to see a lot more out of Nurk. Eventually he'll start finishing strong every time he gets to the hole and then he's going to be a beast on both ends. I think if Zach didn't have a shoulder injury he could have hung onto rebounds and passes, I also think his jumper would have gotten more and more consistent and the fouling would have gone down. Maybe Bazemore would have been effective in a more limited role playing against other second stringers. Hood's shooting and defense (the guy is a really solid defender at SF) would have been huge for us. All of this would have made Dame and CJ far more efficient offensively because they would have had more pieces to take pressure off of them. However, because we would still be starting Dame and CJ together we would still have awful perimeter D but if Zach was around the whole season the defense at PF would have been far far superior which includes his ability to help on the perimeter on pick and roll situations, so our defense would have been better as well. So we would have been far far better on offense and a little better on defense than we were in the bubble, but we would have been that way for most of the season. So we would have been tough for any team to beat but likely would lose to one of the LA teams in the second round of the playoffs.
Maybe, but in a world where Zach had been playing for a whole season, I think he would have learned to not foul as much by then... we don't live in that world so we'll have to wait and see if Zach ever learns how to be aggressive defensively without getting into foul trouble.
They still could have added Ariza and Trent was doing pretty well. Then you still have 1M and possibly Gabriel. Maybe not the best bench but much better than they had for sure. I'm still wondering why they didn't pick up Danny Green?
Losing Collins and Hood at the start of the season was an inconvenience, but would a more flexible coach have come up with a work around? Case in point, why did Baze suddenly become productive in SacTown? Losing Nurk and dealing with Whiteside was a problem on another level. I can cut Stotts some slack on that one.
We dealt Harkless and Meyers for Whiteside; in this scenario are they part of this year's team, or are they part of another trade? We dealt Bazemore for Ariza; in this scenario did we make that trade, or is he still here?
In a world where nobody got injured and we have a front line of Hood/Collins/Nurkic with Trent, Harkless and Ariza (or Bazemore) coming off the bench, is that still an accurate assessment?
the "best-of-all-possible-blazer-worlds" threads are fun...I guess. I think a team being "fully healthy" by the time the playoffs roll around is extremely rare. as for Portland, I'm sure not convinced a healthy Hood and Zach would have made much difference for the Blazers. Hood was playing really well for Portland and they were only 8-12 with him healthy; and Whiteside was playing well at the time too as usual, I think people overrate the impact of role players. They don't significantly alter a team's trajectory. Hood and Zach are role players. Nurkic is a core piece at this point, obviously, but he's been healthy for two playoff series now, and Portland's record is 1-8 in those games Olshey had a bad summer. Part of it was still a hangover from his idiocy of 2016. But he believed that Bazemore, Hezonja, and Tolliver were good additions. That was a disaster. And by his roster decisions, he insured that the Blazers were going to depend heavily on Zach and Simons to play like consistent veterans. That was an obvious bad bet right from the beginning. so no, I'm not buying that the 'missing ingredients' for contending were injured. Too many negative and unlikely variables in the blazer mix. A better regular season record...sure. But there are 3 or 4 or 5 better built teams in the West and that makes it tough to have different results. Blazers still pretenders, healthy or not
lol Had we not gotten hurt, the Lakers would have no answer to the Lillard-Roy backcourt, and Oden would have dominated.
