I'd love to be a fly on the wall during some of their personal discussions. I know they wouldn't publically say anything, but......... This morning, Jaynes said that this current team has him totally baffled. He can't place his finger on what's wrong. He knows something is wrong, but...... I'd love to think the guys will pull together, figure things out, play hard, but......
ABM - I sure hope not. The mounting injuries and now more ref crap are making it hard for some fans to remain interested, let alone excited. The franchise has worked hard to rebuild itself. Not giving 100% while wearing a Trail Blazer jersey would be it for me. If they don't care, why should I? Nah, they care. They've just not been through this before. The injuries, players needing to think about their next contracts, new personalities, new playing styles are going to take half the season I predict to work through. They'll get through this and be stronger because of it. At least they will if they continue to put forth the work ethic and belief in their teammates that past Trail Blazers have.
Uh why is it baffling? I can guess what's wrong. Half of their teammates are injured? You can not honestly expect the same type of play from a team missing 2 starters and 2 key bench players. "Hay guyz u weren't winning like before, WHY?" The worst guy at this is Kenny Vance, can not stand that windbag.
Dwight Jaynes is a tool, that spends NO time around these guys. How would he know how they are reacting to all this?
Actually met him for the first time at the civil war. Worked with him and he was standing next to me, watching some highlights I was cutting. He patted me on my back as he left the TV truck. I wanted to puke!
My buddy (sarcasm inserted here), Gavin Dawson insists that the players will work through this and end the season on a roll. He even went on to say that his expectations are still the same as they were at the beginning of the season.......winning the first playoff series. Me? I dunno. My expectations hinged on Oden's success. I'm beginning to think the players' expectations/hopes did, too.
Greg was pretty essential to this team and his loss was a killer, combine that with the loss of Batum, Outlaw, and now Rudy you're looking at most of the firepower outside of Roy/LMA (and occasional dashes of JBAY if he gets to play) just gone. Like Nik said this team will struggle to score points as the starting lineup is essentially playing 2, maybe 3 on 5 offensively depending on if Blake or Webster show up with an outside shot. It's just really tough to overcome four significant long term injuries out of six key guys. I think the thing that the team also realizes now is that Nic and Greg did a lot of the nitty gritty dirty work on the defensive end and covered for their teammates. With them gone that puts a lot more pressure on the remaining players to put in effort at both ends when maybe they're not used to it (and didn't perhaps fully appreciate it before). Joel has definitely lost a step it seems, and after him there is maybe Dante with dashes of LMA.
I think we're shellshocked right now. It's just a series of body blows and we haven't had a chance to recover. It can't be fun being around the practice facility with all of the player injuries and PA's and Luke's battles with cancer. I think we'll get it together and start rolling again. Roy and LMA are too good to be kept down for long. We'll find our mojo again.
The team already seemed to have a lot of stresses on it. Whether the Oden injury is the straw that breaks the camel's back or causes the team to put aside other concerns and find ways to play together will be interesting. I could see it going either way. Not knowing any of the players on a personal level, I couldn't venture to guess how they'll react over the next few weeks.
I don't think they have... this is the same group that went on a 13 game win streak when no one thought they could... and started off last year great despite a tough schedule. It may be they need their backs to the wall to really shine.
