This current Blazers team is fool’s gold. Any success we have is dependant on our starting guards having sensational nights. The two free agents we picked up during the off-season have bounced around from team to team for a reason. We have two players (Leonard and Layman) who probably couldn’t even earn a spot on most NBA teams. Harkless is overrated. Aminu is horribly spotty as a shooter. Lillard and McCollum are weak defensively. We started strong, but we’re coming back to earth now, and it ain’t pretty.
Depends what your expectations are. 9 of our first 13 games were at home. I was a bit wary going into the road trip. Nurk is the x-factor as far as I'm concerned. If he becomes a 16 and 10 guy I think we can beat anyone.
12-7 with 70% of our games coming against above 500 teams and we're already melting down. I don't get why people are freaking out. There's some obvious issues that we've dealt with for years.
BJ- it’s just that ultimately, we want to beat Warriors and if we can’t beat them with two of their main guys out, the bubble of optimism is burst. Record wise we should be ok. If we sweep our 3 home games, we’ll prob be #1 again and who knows, maybe another team will beat GS for us.
You're bubble of optimism expects so much that it'll always be burst numerous times a season. For example, you care about us being ahead of GS in November when there's no chance we're ahead of them in April. For me it's not even about us losing, it's about the lack of change in terms of style of play from last year, where our style of play was the main culprit in us getting swept in the 1st round by a 6 seed. It's about that, not if we're 1st or 6th or 9th. Why care about positioning when we can't beat anyone in the playoffs due to the way we play? Especially when positioning is so arbitrary so early in the season?
I wish I had the ability to see when the way we play reveals the REAL us versus when it's just a temporary blip. What if the REAL us was the one that was winning? But what if we're never real again? How do you tell?
Beginning of the year we ball movement and players movement and our pace was faster then it is now that the difference. Our style play will maybe get you in the playoffs but that about how far it gets you. Even the 2nd unit starting play the same way. But when they were going good they was had a lot motion of the ball and players. Now you got Curry Nick Turner playing to much iso. Plus the defense has been terrible lately.
We are a 45-50 win team. That’s better than at least 20 teams in the league and we have a top 10 player so it’s not all doom and gloom, the issue is that the upside of the current roster is very small and our avenues to improve the team are rather limited for a good few years. Basically if we don’t hit the lottery and find someone superb in the later stages of the draft (like Utah did with Mitchell) then it’s not really possible for us to get much better. What annoys me is that our front office seems unwilling to shake things up. We have had three opportunities to flip CJ for the type of player we were missing: Paul George, Kawhi Leonard and Jimmy Butler. Three times we refused to do that in fear of them bolting the next year. Considering that George resigned in OKC we were definitely wrong the first time and our offer of CJ would have been better than Oladipo and Sabonis at the time, and we would have got much, much better. I think we are holding on to any half decent player we have way too much and long term it will prevent us from making a leap.
Blazers had a tough road trip. They started in LA on a night where Lebron was on the cusp of a new scoring record. The Blazers tried to battle back but it was Lebrons night. The NBA was going to make sure of that. Then the Blazers traveled all the way to the east coast. They won 2 in a row against the Wizards and the Knicks. Tge Blazers then had to face the Bucks who were on a nice leisurely homestand and have one of the best home records in the NBA, on the second night of a back to back. The Blazers then had to fly back to the west coast and take on the Warriors in Oakland. Blazers haven't won their in 5 years. Not to mention its the Warriors. It was a bad road trip. Its over. Time for a 3 game homestand. We are only a month in to the season. No need to get all doomsday about it.
