Thing bout that is the refs don't blow their whistle for us, so we instead boost threes and long contested low percentage 2's. We get behind. We have to attack anyway regardless of the refs...if we keep attacking they have to blow the whistle eventually as not to make their disdain for us to extremely obvious. We have to keep attacking.
I didn't say it was THE issue. I said it is sometimes a PART of the issue when guys who are poor shooters take the shots early in games and miss. Obviously, defense is the major ugly issue, but that's pretty much consistent from game to game. My thought is that when it's combined with poor shooting early in the game, that's when we end up with those really ugly first quarters.
So the Blazers finally get off to a great start against Boston....and then give up a 13-2 run to end the 2nd half and 43 points in the 4th quarter. Where is the consistency?
There's no mystery here: to be consistently good/great, you need a good/great roster. A mediocre or sub-mediocre roster can look good for short periods and then falls back to their mean. It's not "lack of consistency," it's standard variance starting from a low baseline.
How does that theory explain the second half of last year with basically the same roster? That was a pretty long short period.
It is a pretty long short period, but teams having flukish half-seasons isn't at all unprecedented, across sports. It probably feels more meaningful when it's the second half, but often teams have extremely hot first halves and then regress to the mean in the second half and people ignore it because "a hot start fading" seems like a normal occurrence. But there's no particular reason that the fluke can't happen in the second half.
We have undersized bigs, no legit big except Plumlee who should really be playing PF. Out rebounded and outworked every night. We have guys that shouldnt be shooting threes, shooting them like Harkless and Aminu. I don't care if Aminu shot good last night, he has gotten worse since last season. Stotts needs to stop trying to make non shooters be shooters. Dame and CJ every night, rest of this roster is just bad. Crabbe is inconsistent and not aggressive but I like when he is aggressive because he actually puts up good numbers when he is. I don't care for the 8th seed, don't care to get stomped by Golden state. Moves need to be made this summer. Get it done Olshey. Funny we went from overachieving to underachieving in a year...
Admirable effort, but I think a better answer is that it can't be explained as such. I imagine if you look through the examples of hot starts / cold finishes, or vice versa, to full seasons, you'll find that most of them correspond to significant injuries, coaching changes, team discord, etc. I feel the roster is only half the issue. The other half is background stuff that we're not privy to, such as what effect the "asset collection" summer has had on the psyche of the team, and how that relates to inconsistent effort on the court.
Well, we'll have to agree to disagree. I don't see how "keeping the team together" is going to damage the psyche of the team. That seems far more of a stretch than playing above their heads for a short period and being unable to sustain that level.
Completely agree with this from last night from Kenny Smiths take on it There is little to no talent on this team besides CJ and Dame
I will now hunt you down to restrict your opinion or have you fired from whatever job you have for daring to call a spade a spade. How dare you! Regards, ~Kneel Olshey
It's not that they kept the team together, it's that it was widely believed and/or reported that the summer moves were done to collect assets for subsequent trades. That leaves most everyone looking over their shoulders. That's not a good recipe for cohesive play.
Perhaps. I don't recall Olshey, though, talking in terms of "assets." That seemed to be more of a forum fixation, that Olshey didn't want to "lose assets" as an explanation for paying/overpaying all the prospective free agents. Olshey's track record points to liking his guys and not really doing a ton of player trading (Barton is an exception; Batum isn't since he didn't draft Batum). I've always thought that that was more the reason for paying everyone to avoid them leaving: falling in love with his roster. So it isn't clear to me that the dominant narrative at the team level was, "You're all assets and some of you will be getting dealt."
That may be part of it, but I also agree with Chuck and Shaq that CJ and Dame need to do better at making the players around them better.
That's why I said, "widely believed and/or reported." It was in articles, so whether or not it was Olshey's objective, it was out there for the players to read and ponder.
