And by "Do" I mean "Due". Portland, that's who... Hard to disagree with the reasoning, just hope it doesn't happen.
ugh. No respect at all. And nothing to backup their claims whatsoever-- at least cite our upcoming difficult schedule or something instead of just saying we'll slip because we haven't yet this season. OKC is the obvious pick for this.
I think we've been "slipping" ever since the first time we set a franchise record for 3FGM in a game (@PHI). Sure, we've "slipped" into a few wins against good teams, but overall we haven't been playing as well as we were when we hit our peak against GSW and IND. Not worried about making the Playoffs - we shouldn't see that kind of slippage. But if we keep up our current level of play I don't see a deep Playoff run in 2014...not unless we catch fire from 3 throughout the Playoffs.
I think they definitely do have things to back up their claims. Our defense is awful most of the time, and it is very concerning going forward.
Agreed! Now hopefully this road trip will get us back on track, they've strangely had that effect on us.
Is that anything like 'shrinkage'? [video=youtube;ZDdjeCtux3k]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDdjeCtux3k[/video]
Portland is trying to and actually from the start of the season they have slipped some but. But I think they are doing an adequate job of managing themselves for not being in this position before. Position meaning top two in the west and five in the NBA. They def are not playing their best basketball and not sure they want to be at this stage of the season. They need to win. Dont think winning pretty is all that important at this point. You want to see them tuning up in late March, early April. What you don't want to see is them losing games they shouldn't. And they have in the last ten.
Not a lot of reasons why they think we are going to slip. Bottom ten D and schedule are the two that are cited and they are not wrong that both those are obstacles but we are already in the midst of a "dry" spell so to speak where our O hasn't been as good as the beginning of the season and our D has gotten worse. If we continue the trend in both those regards we will be in for a slip and probably be lucky to go .500 but I personally don't see why our O can't get back into being the well oiled machine where we make the extra pass everytime and our D get back to simply being subpar instead of as bad as my Cowboys D was this year.
I think our offense is operating the same as it was earlier in the season. The difference is that the FG% of a few key players (Wes and LMA) was unsustainable. It seems that earlier in the season LMA was making shots at a much higher rate than at any time in the past, but is now shooting a career-worst FG%. And for the first month of the season Wes was shooting 50% from 3, but for the past month and a half is actually shooting significantly below his career average. Sure, it's possible that these guys get hot again - hopefully it happens during the Playoffs. But given their career averages I wouldn't expect their early-season performance to be the new normal. I don't see how we "get back" to that offense other than through another statistical anomaly in their shooting percentages. The ball movement is still good, guys are always making the extra pass to the open shooter, but you're not going to hit 50% of your jumpers night in, night out, over the course of a season.
Marc Stein @ESPNSteinLine OKC Thunder, according to Elias, will have their first losing record over 10-game span (4-6) since Dec. 4-23, 2009, if beaten tonight at HOU
"John Schuhmann, NBA.com: Portland, meanwhile, should continue to slide. Their bottom-10 defense has been catching up with them, they play 10 of their 16 games between now and the break on the road, with five back-to-backs. The Warriors, when healthy, are the better of the two teams and I could see them ahead of the Blazers come Feb. 14, even though they’re four games behind right now." Based on what exactly? That's the team that lost at home to JJ Hickson and Nate Robinson last night, when healthy, no? That puts that at 5 games behind Portland, John.
People are forgetting a very overlooked stat. The blazers are 29-9 when I predict a win, that's well on pace to 60 wins, I just have to keep up the homerism. Who wants my PayPal to help keep this homerism alive?
