.........and Saturday against the Pistons will be the LAST game of the year that we will be favored to win. Just bringing this up so you guys can cherish this nice W tonight. I'm thinking 3 more wins, maybe 4. Am I wrong?
Man..... this is so damn conflicting. On the one hand, I love our team. I love that they're playing hard and that they aren't giving up. I think it would mean a lot to these guys if they made the playoffs. On the other hand, I don't think our team is good enough to win in the playoffs, and I'm scared that we're going to finish just short of the playoffs, but just ahead of the 12 spot.
Absolutely, and that's a terrible place to be. It seems like this team is playing much better though. Maynor has made a big big difference. I hope we keep him.
When is Vic coming back? He can be vital in our final push. We need at least 12 of these as per my estimation. Then have to win all of the games against UTA, LAL, HOU.
Maybe a game or two. I want Dame to experience the RG in the playoffs. It would give us a bit more exposure to possibly help us land a FA.
But man, that is a TOUGH schedule! I would love to have my guys make the playoffs because that #12 pick basically isn't even going to help us out. But like I said, those are some TOUGH games, and our starters are beat.
Getting into the playoffs would be great in my opinion, the Blazers seem to have the Spurs number, assuming that they continue to hold the one seed, so anything could happen. Other than that series I wouldn't see them advancing further. At least it'd be fun.
Yes. Lillard wants in so I think we should stand behind him. And yes, we can beat the Spurs in a best of seven series. Aldridge plays great against Duncan. Lillard loves playing them. And we aren't afraid of playing at their home. It's games like the one against the Pistons that we lose. We're good against good teams. We've beaten Miami, San Antonio (twice), New York (twice), Memphis (in their building), Indiana (in a blowout), Chicago, Denver, Lakers, and Celtics. But we've lost to Sacramento (twice), Washington (twice), Cleveland, New Orleans (twice), Phoenix (twice), and yes, Detroit. The good news is that 8 of our last 12 games are at home. We need to go 13-5 the rest of the way and I think it's possible. At worst, I see us going 11-7 and just missing out.
Plus losses to Orlando and Toronto. Honestly, this makes me legitimately angry every time I think about it. 12(!) losses to sub-.400 teams. Even winning just half of those, we're 36-28, and even with GSW for the 6 spot. Instead, we're still not even sure if we want to be a playoff team, let alone if we're good enough. Here's how our year has broken down so far: --vs teams below .400: 14-12 --vs teams between .400-.600: 7-11 --vs teams above .600: 9-11 We're actually better against the league's top 8 teams than we are against the middle 10. If that trend holds up over our final 18 games, we go about 7-11, and finish the year 37-45.
I can see 6-7 wins out of that. (Tops) That would still give us the #12 pick and I think that pick can be used in a trade. So it is pretty valuable. I will root for the Blazers to win during every game I watch. And if when we lose, I will go look at the standings and be thankful we lost. I know it is twisted but it works for me.
I think I'd rather we give the pick to Brooklyn this year, whilst we are still in the developing years of the younger guys - so that we have assets later on when we need to fine tune the roster. Even without that pick we can still improve our bench this coming offseason, and really I don't see too many players available that really 'move the needle'.
Last 4 games might be gimmies, with OKC, LAC, DEN, and GS sitting their stars at the end of the season.
