Now let be say that im not saying this team wont make the playoffs or will be a 500. team but look at our first month and tell me that thing isnt brutal. Now that we have learned we will have 1 CENTER till at least mid november who is injury prone and no other center on the roster.... teams are gonna exploit the shit out of us. I mean even the last 2 games, the Blazers are the exact same team they were a year ago. Looking at the early schedule Portland could really get off to a rough start. 2 east coast trips, 2 dates with okc, and the suns. We CANNOT give babbit major minutes and Duante is too small to guard pfs. He will get abused. Its really shameful the blazers knew this all summer (oden being oden and joel hurt) and relied on pendergraph. Its like the last 2 summers, all i hear was the blazers wanna add muscle to front court and again we are in a horrible spot here. Take a look at the early schedule and give me 5 games that are locks. Not easy with a healthy team no less a team with 1 36 year old center. And even though joel might practice.... no way that guy makes an impact till at least thanksgiving. So dont give me the joel is the answer stuff. heres a little clip from blzers edge.... We're starting to see that even though the Blazers upped their overall defensive potential in the last six months, they're going to struggle without their anchors. Wesley Matthews and Nicolas Batum will stay in front of their men most of the time but nobody can contain for an entire game, especially when that entire game is played against the likes of Carmelo Anthony. Without backup, without intimidation in the lane, Portland's defense remains fragile. The Nuggets scored 109 points overall tonight. The defense allowed 53% shooting. The defense allowed 39 foul shots. That's a big allowance. Denver's big points came at the 2-3-4 positions (Anthony, Aaron Afflalo, Shelden Williams), places where the Blazers are supposedly strong defensively. Without the help and the shot-block, it's not there. Blazer fans need to sacrifice chicken gizzards to the basketball gods to get some big men healthy.
Well we won't know what kind of impact Joel will have on the team until we actually lay eyes on him. If he's able to go full contact five-on-five then I would assume he's pain free (as he's said in interviews) and at the very least he can probably give us 12-15 decent backup minutes. We'll see ...
It doesn't look that bad. Looking at the schedule through November, and putting on my best MIXUM inspired negativity cap, I see us going 11-6 at worst (losing to Phoenix, OKC twice, Denver and Utah). Shameful, lol.
Mixum, with all due respect to that rainy cloud that is ever hovering over you [I wanted to say, "with respect to your shitty attitude", but am trying to be nice to you since no one else will be] last season we saw a team with a large group of deeply talented players that pulls together and finds ways to win. I think we will be resilient and get off to a fine start.
No, the Knicks are too good. Only a homer would think Portland could beat a team with LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. LOL
I think you're vastly overrating the rest of the West's big men (especially considering Yao and Bynum are limited this year), and underrating the value of the big men when saying we are virtually the same as last year only having LMA, Camby and Howard playing (while we were still a 51-win team). This year for the beginning of the scheudle we'll still have LMA, Camby and now a 97% Joel (still twice as good as a 100% Howard) and Oden will likely be back about 10-15 games into that schedule and then virtually no frontcourt could match up to us for 48 minutes. Phoenix is a given as it is a home opener and they don't have Amare, so they'll have Frye and the crappy twin Lopez out there. Cunningham and LMA alone could dominate those two softies if needed without a DPOY out there in Camby completetly owning the paint. Chicago with Noah and Boozer is the only likely loss on the schedule as that would be a tough road game in that stretch even if we were LA or Miami. OKC only wins about 1 in 10 games against Portland and they just don't match up well with us, so we'll own them as always with Batum shutting down Durant and our bench being 4-times better than theirs. @ the Lakers was already a loss on our W/L projections, so anything we do there is gravy. And as I said, with Bynum limited to 20-24 mpg, we already have more big man fire-power than them anyway, so we actually have a shot compared to having Howard of last year. @ Milwaukee is the only one I might worry about. Oden will likely be back before we get into the 2nd OKC game on the road or the Denver game against Nene, but I'm pretty sure Oden won't be back by early November against Bogut. So we'll need Joel to be getting up to 100% by then in order to make sure we win this one.
That was a sound bite from someone that was tired of media in his face. The proof in in the actions not the words. Oden was going full speed in an intense full-court practice the other day. Both he and Joel are close to ready to suit up and be on the 12-man rotation. Oden is just a few weeks behind Joel and Joel will likely be there by game 1. Cho will over-react in order to be conservative so he doesn't get egg on his face in his first year as a real GM. But he'll just sign Dampier or some D-leaguer and we'll be left with more dead-weight at center a month into the season. The key is these guys aren't as injured as everyone is playing it up. Joel is nearly ready and Oden is just getting over his routine tendonitis athletes get who don't use a tendon for a long time after rehab, so he's likely already more ready than Roy was in the playoffs last year, and by the beginning of November he'll likely be 100%.
