Absolutely! This is one of my favorite seasons ever! I love this year, I get excited on game days, I get my Blazer jersey on, get my game face on... I love it! Yeah, there have been bad times, but I am not one of those TYPICAL Blazer fans who cry about everything. I am VERY pleased with this team.
Please don't take this to be snooty or elitist, but how many of you were happy this year to pay 80% more for your season tickets under the assumption that we wouldn't be "ok" with missing the playoffs, for whatever reason? I understand that there are no guarantees in sports or in buying tickets. But it seems as if a lot of people who are dismissing people as "not real Blazer fans" for being disappointed in the season haven't come close to putting their money where their mouth is (for whatever reason: distance, budget, etc.). There's way more than one side to this story. I get if you're into "player development". But the Blazers charged according to "Elite Team" levels, and that's what I'm paying for. But not what I'm receiving.
Why is that disingenuous? I'm responding to the topic of the thread. If I had said, "I am no longer proud of the team" then that would be disingenuous, since I wasn't proud of them to start with. Ed O.
I'm not saying the season has been bad, or that the team has underachieved. It's just not a season that I will remember, in particular, beyond the injuries that we've had to endure. That's not the kind of a "memorable" season that I want as a Blazers fan. Ed O.
This season died for me on the day Oden's knee cap broke. Everything that has happened after, while entertaining, has been tinged with disappointment. I still go to games. I still root for the team. But not like I did prior to that horrific day. Thinking about it now makes me feel sick. I wanted to see Miller, Roy, Batum, LMA and Oden become a starting unit other teams dreaded playing. Unfortunately I never got my wish due to a combination of injury and line-up insanity. Nothing the team does this regular season will make up for that loss. Now if the team meets the Lakers in the first round and somehow manages to beat them, then it will be the single best thing the Blazers have done since 1977. All the horrid shit would be overwhelmed by joy. I actually would want the team to have a parade after that.
Its disingenuous because of the context: the statement would be the same regardless of our performance; it's static. But, it's also sitting next to wat looks to be a conditional statement. Those two statements are designed to be taken as a pair. You separated them from the other paragraphs, but kept them together in their own paragraph. Because it's associated with a statement that is conditional ("I don't love this season", though you might love this season if we were 39-11) the implication is that the second statement is also conditional, which is not true. ...unless both are static statements (e.g., even if we were 50-0, you'd no love this season)?
While I appreciate you informing me of what I am implying with my writing, you can trust me that you're wrong. I put those two things together because they addressed sentiments that other people had expressed in this thread. They are not together because they are dependent on one other. Before you call someone "disingenuous," you should probably have something better than an inference you claim is an implication. Ed O.
That's absolutely fair, but your audience - who isn't going to be as enriched with the context behind your thought process as you are - needs you to be clear to avoid misinterpretation. This mistake I made obviates that. Once you put the message out there, interpretive mistakes are generally due to mistakes on both end. Intent of the author is all well and good, but an unstated fact doesn't protect you from being at least partially to blame for a misinterpretation. At the time I felt the name (disingenuous) was not only justified but true. Never mind the other inferences I had in digesting the fact that you had proud in quotes (the phrase "moral high-ground" comes to mind). There is quite a bit lost in online communication, but even worse is what is mistakenly added. I forgive you for your lack of clarity, though. I see now that you didn't mean it.
and a depleted D-league Warriors have beat the Celtics and the Mavs in Dallas this year, whats your point?
Let me clarify one thing. I'm as upset as anyone that Oden and Przy and everybody else got injured. How could I not be? I had VERY high hopes for this year, and they've mostly been dashed . . . That said, look what is happening. This team has come together in an amazing fashion, and learned how to win despite having only a skeleton crew. They're playing as hard as I've ever seen, for a full 48 minutes, and they never give up. This new attitude is marvelous to behold, and it's made a "lost season" into a very memorable one for me. I'll go even further. I think we might have won some games in the last 2 months that we would have lost if Oden and the others had still been playing. We've found a new rhythm that we didn't have before, and it's made us a more smoothly functioning unit.
This season has helped several players gain valuable experience... but I don't know if those are guys we really care about, frankly. Jeff Pendergraph - is he ever going to be much more than a 10th man? Dante Cunningham - might have a diamond in the rough there, or we might just have a guy who's been beneath notice on the scouting reports. Now that Batum and Fernandez are back, we can get some absolutely talented players some experience. But any season where you're a young team, and you're depending on a 37 year-old power forward to play 30+ minutes out of position for you at center, something is seriously wrong. I think there are some bright spots from this season - we're seeing Martell Webster show some consistency (so maybe he's trade-able, or worth a spot in the rotation longer-term), we've got Jerryd Bayless putting things together, the two rookies are showing some promise... but the injuries to Oden, Przybilla, Outlaw, Fernandez, and Batum took five of our most important rotation players away, and it's hard to believe that Pritchard or McMillan is getting a good sense of how to adjust this team for the future - and that was really the key for this season. Am I impressed with their heart? Yes. But I need to see that translate into an impressive showing in the playoffs for me not to feel that this was a disaster - perhaps even a bit of a tragedy - of a season for this franchise.
Holy cow. Another very impressive win by the Blazers over a very good defensive team. Aldridge has strung together two wonderful games, and Webster is really hitting his stride. Good times!
