Zombie Fire Olshey

I am not going to call for firing Olshey, yet, for a couple of reasons.

1) The team is in a serious funk so far this season. “Occasionally” they play at a very high caliber. Then they go back to being a sad lot. Given how well they developed last season, not sure anyone could predict this regression. Something is not right with this team. Unless the problem originates from one of the new players, how can we blame Olshey for it? It appears to be more of a locker room problem than a talent issue.

2) Olshey does not work for me, and I do not have any inside info on how the decisions were made last offseason.

However, I do have a serious issue with Olshey. Everything indicates that he did not have a plan that extended past this season. All of his FA signings only make sense for one season, this one, and look how it is turning out. The problem is, the 6 largest contracts were for 4 seasons, not one. (ok dame is for 5 seasons, but worth it)

After this season, we are looking at three seasons of cap space hell. It will be three years of trying to dodge the luxury tax. There will be few opportunities to improve the team, outside of the draft.

How could any GM with a multi-year plan do this to himself and the team??

 

IMO Stotts should be being held to the fire more so than Olshey.
We have seen spurts of good play (and last season), so we know that some talent is there.

Once again though, in this past Wizards game, the team shows up just fully unprepared to compete from the tip-off.
The degree of unprofessionalism (and lack of pride) in their conduct is mind boggling.

Little things continue to not be executed. Effort, boxing-out - DISCIPLINE (shots/turnovers/positioning)- there is just so much this team is doing wrong right now, that frankly, they are an embarrassment.

It's Stotts' job to, at the least, have the team ready to play and to compete night in night out.
This is just not happening - and along with the unprofessional conduct and frankly sub high school discipline/fundamentals being displayed - we need a coach who will demand some accountability.

 

In my opinion, there's a big misconception that if a team is capable of playing well sometimes, they're capable of playing that well all the time and if they don't, it's the fault of lack of hustle, coaching, leadership, etc. But it isn't the case that occasional good games means that's the level they can play at all the time--variance exists both on the individual level and the team level. Players will sometimes play above their usual level in short stretches (and sometimes below their usual level for short stretches). The same is true of teams.

This isn't some special characteristic of the Trail Blazers that demonstrates unfulfilled talent level--every bad/mediocre team has stretches of looking much better than their record. If we applied this standard league-wide (a team is as talented as their very best play) every team "should be" playing .750+ ball or something along those lines.

The average over a longer stretch, like the entire season to date, is a much better baseline for setting expectations--unless there's some major extenuating circumstance, like a superstar having missed a long stretch of the season (Aminu doesn't qualify, in my opinion, though your mileage may vary). It isn't at all surprising to me that they can beat Cleveland and then lose to in blowouts to the Magic and Wizards and it doesn't change my expectations for the team. They didn't "turn a corner" in the Cleveland game, or the games before that, they just had a stretch of unusually good play.

Stotts may be a problem, or he may not, but I don't think their failure to live up consistently to their best games is indication of that. I also don't think they're inconsistent in giving effort (or, at least, no more so than any other team)--they're a below-.500 team that's experiencing the usual ups and downs from that baseline.

 

Expectations were based on a long sample size which was last year. We are not even close to where we were defensively last year, so to suddenly regress badly especially on one end of the court means something is happening that is not the norm.

 

2oth in defensive efficiency last year. 27th in defensive efficiency this year. 7th in offensive efficiency last year. 9th in offensive efficiency this year. And really I wouldn't call it a "long sample size" last year, it was about a half-season of play.

 

we are 20th in defensive efficiency because of a year long sample and we played about as bad as we are playing this year at the beginning of last year and a whole lot better the second half of the year. We went from allowing teams to avg 104p against us last year to teams avg 110 points this year, that is worst then the worst defensive team all of last year in Sacramento/
For reference the drop in points per game from 20th to 27th last year was under 3 a game this year its just under 5.
If you want to use defensive efficiency we were 105.5 last year and we are 109 this year.
The offense hasn't been a problem at all but the defense isn't just worse its damn near worst in the league

 

Yeah, the offense is about where it was last year, so I feel pretty comfortable with the proposition that Portland has a top-ten offense. As for the defense, the season-long number last year (20th) wasn't great--and while I'm fine with using the season-long number, it's at least a little concerning (now) that there was a stark split roughly pre- and post-All-Star-break. Portland didn't play at "20th ranked defense" level all season...they probably played at more like the 15th ranked defense last year after the All Star break and similar to this year before the break. After last season was over, one could build a plausible narrative that the huge difference was just a young team coming together, but I don't think that narrative holds together anymore especially when their main free agent addition was a player, in Turner, who derives his main value from defense and otherwise they kept that team together.

Instead, that post-All-Star-break period is looking like a half-season fluke wrapped in a full season (in total) of defensive futility. Portland being defensively futile also comports better with the actual personnel the team has, which in no way suggests defensive competence.

In any case, we can wait for the end of the season to better assess. But, right now, I'd say that the team is probably one of the ten best teams offensive and close to the bottom of the league in defense. Even with a strong offense, that kind of defense isn't going to lead to consistently good play, no matter how well-coached or how much effort they put in.

 

My point was that even if you account for a half-season of average defense, it's not like they were lights out and it still wasn't much of a sample. Secondly, after that half-season of play I'm guessing coaches around the league simply adjusted and implemented some strategies over the off-season to counter Stotts' approach last year. The last week or two shows that Stotts is maybe finally countering the counter. Who knows where it will go from here: Cleveland and Lakers good. Orlando and Washington bad.

 

So, in another 5 years we'll see another wrinkle to our defense? Yay!!

 

I don't think Stotts is much of a defense guy, but he doesn't have a lot of ingredients in his kitchen either. It's all pretty much smoke and mirrors with Lillard and CJ on the perimeter and Mason manning the middle -- just too many leaks and not enough sealant.

 

He doesn't really have a whole lot to work with if you really think about it. This team is desperate for some good veterans.

 

Yes. I really did think about it ... which is why I wrote that he doesn't have a lot of ingredients to work with ...

 

Agreed, but on the other hand, what does Stotts really have to work with?

 

That's a good point. That's a really good point. I hadn't thought of it like that.

 

In every speech it was about asset acquisition or keeping assets to be in position for a big move. Something he did perfectly in Los Angeles with the CP3 trade. With all the contracts from last summer it was clear that the asset acquisition aspect of his plan was over. Now the next part has to be capitalization on those assets. The major problem is that those guys (Meyers, Turner or Crabbe) don't play good enough to draw interest. Harkless does.

Should we fire Olshey now? I don't think so. Waiting until this summer to give him two windows to trade his assets would be logic in my opinion.

 

If he can find a trade partner interested in Plumlee he needs to move now. I like him, but he's really a more of a high-level, offensively minded backup center miscast as a starter, and going into the luxury tax to retain him seems like a bad strategy. Conversely, letting him walk for nothing is just one more asset out the door for zero compensation; I'd settle for a second round pick if I were Neil.

As for waiting until the summer on the rest, I suppose it doesn't hurt to see if a few guys like Meyers, Davis, et al. can rebound from a poor first half of the season and up their value a bit. I just hope to god Neil and Allen don't get bamboozled into holding on to them if they do manage to reverse course for a couple of months.

 

The following post is an encore presentation of a previous post previously posted:

This team needs a center.

Where are you Festi-Wan Ezoli? You're our only hope.

Ouch, that's a dismal thought.

 

I agree. This season has to be written off as a fundamental component of Olshey's long term strategy. If this strategy doesn't pay off by the start of next training camp then Olshey's strategy will have been a dismal failure. And if that happens: