The worst part about Melo is that we don't sit him when he's ice cold. I don't get it. The guy has no leash at all.
Odd, though, that the furthest we've progressed in the playoffs in the past 20 years was with Kanter as the starter.
I'm not getting your point Portland ranked 29th in defensive rating when this thread was started, nearly 3 months ago. They still rank 29th. No improvement relative to the league. After 26 games of Kanter/Trent starting, Portland's rating had dropped. Maybe by 1-1.5 points. But it has dropped 1.2 points after the Stotts challenge at the all-star break, and that includes 8 games of CJ starting, rather than Trent, and two games each for Nurkic and Powell. Last night, the Blazers had their full lineup against a Toronto team missing their starting PG and the Blazers posted a rating worse than their abysmal season average sure, there will probably be some adjustment time, but it's pretty damn rare for Stotts to adjust Portland into better defense
It takes some luck in addition to talent. In the Era of Superteams we don't stand much of a chance in a 7-game series with star power against us. I think we're top 4 in the West, which is fine by me.
Olshey has completely changed the roster this year. And last year was completely different than the year before. Unless you’re just talking about Dame & CJ. I doubt you want to trade Dame, so it’s CJ. Why not just call out CJ instead of “main pieces.” Unless you want to trade Dame.
So do I - so long as you ignore at least two out of the Lakers, Jazz, Suns, Clippers and Nuggets. Also probably Dallas. And I bet the Spurs could take us in the playoff series. And if Memphis ever got healthy... But for sure we're better than Houston and Minnesota.
where are they getting that stat? last column: it's certainly the best on the team, but not good enough for 3rd in the league. He had a defensive rating of 121 last night. Besides, he can't play 48 minutes a game. I'm sure he will help the Blazer defense, but they are in such a deep hole, Nurk can only do so much
I think that both Nurk and Powell will have positive impacts on the defense. I don’t think you can make any conclusions about their importance based on yesterday’s game. Nurk isn’t in shape and is on restricted minutes. Powell just got here. Saying that RoCo and DJ Jr. haven’t made a significant difference on the defense is kind of like saying that closing two of the water tight doors on the Titanic didn’t improve things. Olshey made his off-season roster plans to improve the defense looking at the entire roster. Not having Nurk and Collins made it pretty difficult to judge whether his moves were going to be effective. Now that Nurk is back, we’re going to get to find out more.
I honestly have no idea how we have as many wins as we do. It's kind of miraculous. We've gone 7-3 in the last ten games with these stats: It's witchcraft.
I don't disagree with that, although if Powell permanently replaces Jones as a starter, I don't think he improves the starting unit's defense when this thread was started, Portland's rating, with Nurkic, was 114.9 which would be good enough to move Portland from 29th to 28th. Both instances have sample size issues. And obviously, entering the playoffs what matters is how the defense has been playing over the last 20% of the season, not the first 80% we will get to see the impacts from here on out, and the test will have a degree of difficulty much higher than what Portland has faced so far. They currently have the 28th hardest strength of schedule, but their remaining SOS is brutal: and that includes their next game against the 12-33 pistons
