I am not always a negative person, and I don't even really feel like arguing about these things... I just wish I could have a sunnier outlet about the upcoming season. With that said, my top 10 things that bum me out about the Blazers this year: 1. Greg Oden. Yes, he's ready to practice, and he MIGHT be healthy... but it doesn't seem we've had glowing reports and I'm finallly to the point where I expect him to get injured, rather than to get healthy and dominate. I hope I'm wrong, and I'll be rooting for him (he's still my favorite Blazer), but... just bummed about it. 2. Brandon Roy retiring. I was going to have "Brandon Roy's injury and contract" but his retirement is both better and worse. I feel terrible for him and his missed opportunities for a great NBA career, but it will be good that the team will get some salary cap relief next year. I was never as big a fan as many on this board (I still never considered him a top 10 player because he didn't have the track record of the guys at his level) but removing him from the scene altogether is a nail in the coffin for the hopes and dreams we all had of an Oden/Roy/Aldridge big three. 3. 2011 draft results. I think that Nolan Smith was a reach and a poor choice. I am rarely enthused by 23 year-old rookies (he's only six months younger than Oden!), and someone who's got limited experience as a PG but is too small to be an effective shooting guard... it all just reeks of mediocre tweener-ness and continues the well-worn and failure-laden approach of drafting mature players from big programs. 4. 2010 draft results. Of course, it's not like the team did better with Babbitt. If more were going well for the franchise, I might be more optimistic about the guy's chances as a prospect... it is conceivable that he had a rough rookie year but his one good skill (shooting) is so valuable that he will emerge as a guy who will contribute. Given how many other things have gone wrong, I just don't see it. Elliot Williams? I have hopes for him, but knee injuries have not been kind to the Blazers and, even if he were healthy, his skill set is a bit sketchy at the NBA level. 5. 2009 draft results. Claver. Pendergraph. Cunningham. The team flushed three of the top 33 picks in the draft down the toilet by taking an int without a defined position and two mediocre college seniors from big programs. Ugh. 6. Jerryd Bayless. I know many here don't like him, but he is at least the prospect that Nolan Smith is, IMO. And a bit younger. 7. Raymond Felton. He is a sub-average NBA starting PG, and he doesn't do anything particularly well. And, at age 27, he is what he is. Why the Blazers would actually go after a guy like this is beyond me. 8. Nate McMillan. Is he a good coach? Almost certainly. Does he coach an exciting brand of basketball? Not by a long shot. He also has failed to get his teams to come up big in playoff games, and I have no hopes that he will be able to help this team get over any humps. 9. Our GM situation. 10. Paul Allen. I've loved him as an owner and I am grateful that he has sunk so much money into teams that have brought me lots of joy... I'm hopeful that we are in a "PatterNash before Pritchard" period and that some good things happen to this franchise, but Allen's has not been a steady hand and it would be surprising to me if this changed. Honorable mention: Batum's handles/ability to play the 2, Wallace's injury history, Camby's age, dearth of quality bigs. There are good things (Aldridge, Batum's potential, Wallace here a full year) but... it's looking pretty effing bleak to me. Ed O.
fwiw.... from hollinger What's amazing is that in the wake of all this, and the fact that Greg Oden hasn't been healthy for most of the last half-decade, Portland still should have a pretty good team and make the playoffs again. The Blazers have an All-Star in the making in LaMarcus Aldridge and several good role players, and Roy's announcement positions them to recover quickly. But it's a disappointment compared to the promise of three years ago, when it appeared a Roy-Aldridge-Oden nucleus was poised for world domination. They'll be a nice team that wins more than half its games and probably loses in the first round of the playoffs again, but one can only wonder what might have been before fate intervened.
Reasons to be cheerful: 1. Aldridge. He made a huge leap last season and he's worked just as hard this offseason. 2. Batum. I predict he makes an Aldridge-like leap this season 3. The Felton-Crash combination: they know each other very well, and that should help both of them. 4. Elliot Williams: should at least be fun to watch. 5. Wesley Matthews is healthy. 6. I think Nolan Smith could surprise, and in a good way. Arizona underachieved with Bayless, and Bayless never got that it was a team game. Smith has a diametrically opposed personality and managed to play PG for coach K. And remember, Brandon Roy was an "old" rookie.
Serious? I'm glad he's gone. I'd much rather see Batum, Matthews, and Williams get the minutes over Rudy.
7. Without Roy and Miller, this team should finally be molded as a running team. Nate's talked the talk, now we'll see if he can walk it. I think he can and that this team is going to be fun to watch. 8. Cap and trade flexibility galore. Camby and his expiring contract could be an ideal candidate for a trade deadline deal. The Blazers can make trades or open up considerable cap space for next summer. 9. A new GM will be coming before next summer and should offer a chance to reinvigorate the vision for the team. 10. Joel Freeland should be available to be added to the roster next summer. I'm impressed with what he's been doing in Europe the past couple of seasons. Adding another solid big should be a plus.
Ed--this was a brilliant thread. Knowing the contrarian nature of most of the posters on this board, you intentionally set out to create a negative thread, knowing that the most likely outcome would be positive posts opposing yours. Well done sir!!
Perhaps I'm contrarian, perhaps I'm warped. I have a one new hope for the year (albeit, small hope but it is there). It is a well-known and documented fact that Nate likes slow-ball (no matter what he says - the actions speak much louder than the words). It has also seemed to me that Roy was a great complement to Nate's slow-ball as Roy was a deliberate player. Perhaps, <small glimmer of hope>, Nate will actually speed things up as there is no slow-ball go-to guy for the team. In looking at the team, the best hope for easy baskets will be up-tempo as compared to slow-go. At least, that is my hope <soon to be crushed I'm sure>. Gramps...
Here I think I'm pulling out a word that is rarely used on this board and what happens? It gets used in a post as I'm composing mine. Sheesh! Gramps...
I never bought the fact that Felton is anything more than a backup on a good team. Larry Miller can go on and on about tempo but this was a lateral move from Andre Miller at best. We used to be a young up-and-coming team but now we're left with just two young player worth talking about: LaMarcus and Nicolas. Paul Allen has proved that he really doesn't have a clue. With Brandon a shell last season and Miller aging he goes out and trades for a SF? We desperately need a PG and that's apparently very low on PA's totem pole.
I have low hopes about this season, but I still feel good about the Blazers for two reasons. 1) I think they have a good future after this year. They will have few hefty contracts and more ways to get new quality using exemptions created by Roy retiring. 2) The Blazers have three players that excite me. Two (Aldridge and Batum) are fun to watch on both sides of the floor, and one (Elliot) should just be a blast to watch from a purely athletic freak standpoint, and hopefully he turns into something. Overall, I am not nearly as excited about the current situation as when i thought we had our big three (Oden, Roy and Aldridge) all young, healthy and talented. But I am still excited for the Blazers and think things should be fun to watch.
Ed, some great points and I agree with many of your sentiments. These are many of the reasons I was fine with losing the season to a lockout even though I’m a Blazer fanatic. Totally agree on our recent draft picks, I can’t understand how anyone can think Nolan Smith is worth having any excitement about. I suspect some of our fellow posters are always excited about every Blazer draft picks no matter how terrible they are. The last two seasons I had high hopes entering training camp only to be emotionally crushed as injuries derailed any chance at contention. I guess I’m entering this season with greatly tempered expectations. If I expect us to barely make the playoffs and get bounced in the first round can I really be that disappointed? I can sit back and casually follow the team this year. We are still in such a better place then this team was during the PatterNash era. Our top young prospects then were guys like Travis Outlaw and Ha Sung Jin; we were getting blown out nearly every game of the season. This year will be immensely better then that dark age. On a positive side, there are a few parallels that remind me of our ’99 lockout roster. That team shocked the hell out of me and made a run to the WCF.
Cue the SNL "Lowered Expectations" music but the one of the things I love about these teams since Brandon/LMA came along is that they never say die no matter how far behind they are. We just never seen any of them coasting. I have so many frustrating memories of the team after the 2000 finals where the players looked like they didn't care at all... CTC!
I think this team is going to be better than the sum of its parts. That's one thing that Nate has been able to do: get teams to pull together. The ultimate instance of that was the Sheed Detroit title team. I think we can emulate that (with Oden as Ben Wallace).
