Which is More Significant: Finishing 3rd in the West or the Playoff Sweep?

Things we could've done:
- Run more side pick n roll (can't trap off a roll guy there so there's no one on his side of the floor to recover) - this actually worked the couple of times we did it.
- Run lower top pick n roll so Dame has options to relieve pressure
- Run in transition so they cant set up and trap (maybe play more aggressive defense to try to create those opportunities),
- Use Dame and CJ off the ball more especially utilizing them in off-ball screens (harder to trap),
- Let Dame ISO a little bit more where he can go 1 on 1 instead of 1 on 2,
- Or simply use more ball/player movement to relieve and beat the over-pressuring defense.

 

Yeah, actually they are. Calling the winning streak improbable diminishes those wins just as much as @KingSpeed minimizes the losses down the stretch.

He's not doing that. He's saying we had a good enough record before those losses that they didn't negatively impact our seeding.

POR won 49 games and they won the games they needed to win to clinch the 3rd seed - like the season finale over UTA. It doesn't matter whether those 13 wins were in a row, or 13 equally spaced victories. They all count the same in the final standings.

All this talk about how UTA would have finished ahead of us if Gobert hadn't been injured is straight up bullshit. The fact is, he was injured, just like he has been in 3 of his 5 NBA seasons. If you build your team around injury prone players, you have to accept that they will miss games (see Greg Oden and Brandon Roy). There are no mulligans. And, even with Gobert and a healthy roster, UTA couldn't come close to beating POR when they needed to. In our last two head to head games we trounced UTA by a combined 28 points.

You don't like Eric minimizing our losses, I feel the same way about posters calling our wins "improbable". There is no probability involved. You either win the games or you don't. POR did - enough to EARN the 3rd seed in a very competitive Western Conference.

BNM

 

We are still rebuilding. Sustained success and slow improvement is more important than a particular playoff match-up outcome. Look how our Defense improved last year, if we can keep a TOP 10 defense and get our Offense consistently up to Snuff we'll be in great position to trade or pick up that third Star.

 

That's exactly my point, you can't use the "we still got the 3 seed even though we lost games down the stretch" argument. Doesn't matter when those losses came, you gotta look at the whole picture.

Also, Nurkic has been as injury prone as Gobert, so yes, we did get lucky.

 

Neither.

 

No were not.

Rebuilding teams are non-playoff teams that aim for top picks and are willing to trade good talent for young prospects, picks, and cash savings. We are none of those things.

Sustained improvement is important, in regards to post-season ball. We haven't improved at all in that area. Toronto consistently improved in the regular season, but never in the playoffs.

 

Anyone who voted 49 wins should give up their fan card, IMO. Playoffs are all that matter, and we sucked.

 

Any mod who disagrees with me should hang up their fan card, IMO.

 

You guys got fan cards?

 

A team that gets crushed repeatedly is hardly a playoff team. Rebuilding teams are non contenders, which we became when Wes went down and turncoat left. Top picks are a crap-shoot, we are finding good talent in the draft, we just have to develop them (and Nurk). Cash savings? see Ed and Vonleh.

 

Let's re-phrase the question: Would you rather have your team get the 1st seed and then lose in the first round, or get the 8th seed and be the Cinderella team that wins the title?

 

Sure:

 

So there's 25 rebuilding teams? If that's the case, the team state of "rebuilding" has no meaning, since it applies to many completely different situation.

 

What do you compete in the regular season for? To try to win games to get a better seed to go deeper in the playoffs. Sure, you enjoy each game as it's separate entity, but if the questions about being competitiveness, then being competitive in the playoffs is more important than being competitive in the regular season.

 

So rebuilding is only when you're at the foundation stage? If you haven't completed your build, what do you call that? https://www.dictionary.com/browse/rebuilding 2015, we dismantled our core (Wes, Nico, LA), The past three years we've been (albeit slowly) take your pick: replacing, restrengthening, reinforcing, revising, reshaping, reorganizing.

 

Even contending teams do some of those things.

Rebuilding in sports usually can be described by the saying "rebuilding the foundation". Once you have the foundation, what are you rebuilding? The bench? The foundation is the most important part of the team, so you can only be rebuilding, IMO, if you have a young foundation building themselves and the organization with them, or if you're tearing down and rebuilding the foundation from the ground up.

Altering the foundation isn't rebuilding. None of those words mean rebuilding.

 

I think you’re arguing what “rebuilding”, in sports means to different people, so you’ll get different answers. I think we all generally know what “a rebuild” looks like, and after wes went down we rebuilt. You can argue about where the Blazers are in that process but considering they’ve only made it to the 2nd round once I’d say they’re still in throws of it. They have rebuilt their core from the looks of it with Dame / CJ and Nurk, but the rest of the team has a ton of question marks right now which mean the rebuild is more or less who they’re going to fill in around the core.