I think they all got better. Portland did. Most of the teams in the western conference did. I think the question is, how do you measure how much better they have become? It is very hard for Portland to analyze it's situation because we don't know how much better the players will have become. But when we look at San Antonio, we know what they got with RJ. When we look at Dallas, we know what they got with Marion. Even the one free agent Portland did bring in, seems to be a mixed review as to how much he will help the team. Some people think Miller is what we need. Others think it is a dart thrown at the board. Lastly, a lot of folks don't want to end up with a situation like New Orleans did. Made the playoffs and were considered contenders. Then they didn't improve, got hit by the injury bug, and no longer snuck up on anybody, and it turned out to be a pretty rough year last year.
having the head to head advantage doesn't really say much as far as which is the better team. the mavs may be better than the blazers head to head, but the blazers were better against the rest of the league. was golden state better than the mavs a couple years back when the mavs had the best regular season record and the warriors were the 8th seed? are the bobcats better than the lakers because the bobcats have only lost one game to the lakers in the past 3 years? that is very debatable. i think basically everyone can agree that the spurs got better and the rockets got worse. other than that, everything else is up for debate.
Well I don't think because the team is young, one can automatically assume their winning record will get better each year. Blazers had a hell of a year (not so much playoffs) winning a lot of close games and in many games, coming back from a large deficit. I don't believe all are convinced the Blazers will do it again this year and I have read two national analysts saying the Blaers are now overrated. I mentioned NO in the last post. Some analyst might draw a comparision there and NO took a step back after a very good year. I just think as for an analyst it is easy to put the organizations that are competeing year in and year out at the top of the list. They are a little more predictable than the young unproven (over the years) teams. Edit-oops repeated a lot of what hasoos already said.
At the same time, though, we don't know how much wear is left on Tim Duncan's tires. Or Ginobili's. We don't really know how Marion will fit in Dallas, given that a lot of his roles are already being played by Howard (athletic 3) and Nowitzki (rebounding 4). Frankly, I think a lot of people are underrating Portland. The Blazers have added significant numbers of wins 4 straight years. If you want to talk about consistent teams, there really isn't a more consistently improving team in the league than Portland. The Hornets, by comparison, went from 18 wins to 38 wins to 39 wins to 56 wins. That team always struck me as a group that got by on an over-performing Chandler and a Peja who was going to start breaking down at any minute. Portland hasn't really relied on any such fragile veterans to get them to where they are now. On the contrary, they've dealt with a massive rookie injury (Oden's knee) and that looks to be pretty much over with. And they added a veteran guy in Miller who drastically strengthens their weakest position. Sure, there's no guarantee that all our young players will continue to improve. But if the history of NBA players under the age of 25 is any kind of predictor, the majority of our young guys will be better than they were last year. Young players generally get better. Old players generally wear out. Our team is loaded with young players, while many of the perennial contenders have a larger proportion of old players. It's a pretty good bet in my book that Portland has a better record next year than they did last year.
I pretty much agree with all of that. I like to pretend in my headz that LA w/ Artest is the suxxxorr LOLZ!
you said most of the teams got better. i said that was debatable. i would say that most of the teams did not get better.
i don't think artest makes the lakers worse, but i also don't think he improves the team. he has positives, but he also has negatives that i feel will cancel those out. basically the same way i feel about adding andre miller to the blazers.
Well then you would have to be a master debator to show that one. I can only see a couple of teams who got worse, PHX and Utah, Houston. The rest either improved themselves, have players coming back from injury who did not play much last year, or sat still (Denver). In my book, that meets the definition of most.
It won't make any headlines, but Duncan, Ginobili, Nash, Baron Davis, Billups, Nowitzki, and even Bryant all got a year closer to concluding their careers as premier NBA players. Many of those guys will show some decline this year. Older veteran teams like San Antonio have to bring in fresh blood every year just to keep from sliding as their stars begin to fade. Every year I read a lot of banter about how the majority of teams had significant upgrades. Clearly this is not true, or the NBA would be a vastly more competitive game than it was in the 1990's, and nobody really thinks that. The hot new acquisition gets the headlines. Tim Duncan scheduling an offseason visit to a knee specialist doesn't.
