I've been driving like crazy and I've been wanting to start this thread but I haven't been able to until now. What I'd like to ask people is, in light of our performance against the team that swept us in the playoffs, does this point to us being a better team this year? How are we better? Do people feel we have made progress and will be better in the playoffs? Has Stotts improved as a coach? Thank you for your thoughts in advance.
Though i do beleive we are improving, i think its more of an NO regression. Without rhondo they seem lost. No leadership.
Regular season doesn't matter. I get a good laugh/head shake when people say. 'Blow it up'. After x loss or after x point spread at half time. Or when people say. 'This proves we're not ready for the playoffs'.. In December/January. For this team regular season doesn't matter history has shown they're going to make the playoffs(pending injury, knock on wood). So no one knows yet. Portland beat the Pelicans twice in the regular season last year as well iirc.
Of course. We've now got their number. Couple that with the fact that I've never been a fan of Gentry and NOLA is toast in Portland or against Portland on their home court.
Portland beat New Orleans twice in the regular season last year...and they've beat them twice this season. Of course, both wins were at the Moda. Blazers won't play the Pelicans on their floor till March 15, and that's the only remaining game. So. considering how integral Rondo was to the Pelicans last season, I don't think they are a good gauge is Portland better? Well, Nurkic looks better this season and is having a bigger impact. Aminu is having perhaps his best season as a Blazer. CJ is the same although may be more of a black hole this year. Dame is Dame. Harkless has been injured but Layman is much better this season. Turner is Turner. Meyers is playing like a big man some of the time but he's not as good as Davis was. Curry/Stauskas isn't really any better than Bazz/Pat. Zach has shown some upside, but his inconsistency and constant foul trouble is limiting his impact in other words, the parts seem a little better but I'm not sure the sum of the parts is. And, maybe most important, the flaw New Orleans exposed, that being that Portland is rudderless when Dame is shut down, has not been fixed. Maybe, in the playoffs, Portland will go up against a team that can't exploit that flaw as well as New Orleans did, but that weakness is still there. finally, the record is deceiving because Portland has such a large imbalance in home/road games. So...better? maybe, maybe not. Too early to tell
Playoffs will tell us very little if we open up against the Warriors though. Losing to N.O last year was bad, but if we lose to the same team everyone else loses to in the west, like the previous two years, it won't tell us much at all. Just that the Warriors are a lot better. No news flash there.
Nope. Not convinced until we do something in the playoffs. Until then they're just any other streaks in the regular season.
Yes we have had more home games so far this season, but we also have had one of the toughest schedules to date as well. Last year I heard several posters constantly harp on our easy schedule last year but nobody seems to give us credit this year for having the record we do with one of the toughest schedules.
I echo all the playoffs comments. Quick was on a podcast recently and said the same. Jobs are on the line this year for Terry and Neil and the threshold to cross is the first round of the playoffs. If they fail to do that again, he thinks there's a sorta mandate that both are gone.
I think we are about the same. Pelicans are much worse than they were last season, they were 47-35 last year from what I remember and will be lucky to win 40 games this year.
I doubt we will play Warriors. I don’t think we will drop below 5th seed. Warriors will finish ahead of us, some of Nuggets, Thunder, Rockets and Jazz will be ahead of us but won’t be surprised at all if we are 3rd or 4th. It will be tough to catch Nuggets but we should be able to finish ahead everyone else.
Next time, just text while you drive! You should have learned from last time--The regular season is not an accurate predictor for the playoffs. We're better in how Stotts uses Nurkic. We're worse in 3 ways--McCollum diminishing, Zach Collins replacing Ed Davis, and Harkless' injury.
Too close to call. 4 games separate 3rd and 10th. Like last year there will not be much difference between a lot of teams.
a lot of people around here are certainly giving Portland credit for that SOS. You just did yourself. And Portland has a fairly easy remaining SOS. But the flaw with SOS is that it doesn't account for Home/Road Portland's home/road imbalance can't be ignored, especially knowing how difficult it is to win on the road, even against weaker teams. By my count, 1 team (Spurs) has played 25 home games; 6 different teams have played 24 home games; 22 other teams have played 20-23 home games. Portland has played 27 home games, by far the most in the league. They have a 27-20 home/road imbalance which is huge. They've played a lot of good teams but they've played a lot of those games at the Moda look at this: * Golden State: 24 home games; 32 wins +8 * Denver: 23 home games; 30 wins +7 * OKC: 21 home games; 26 wins +5 * Utah: 21 home games; 26 wins +5 * Spurs: 25 home games; 27 wins +2 * Houston: 23 home games; 25 wins +2 * Lakers: 24 home games; 25 wins +1 * Clippers: 24 home games; 25 wins +1 * Portland: 27 home games; 28 wins +1 last year, Portland finished at +8 in their home/Win balance. Winning on the road has always been the key to a good season and currently, Portland ranks 8th among the 9 conference contenders in road winning %. That's not a good sign, especially considering how many road games they have left. They have 14 home games left; to match last season's record of 49 wins, they would have to go +8 the rest of the way. That's a real tall order, even with an easy SOS it's possible. Last season after 47 games, Portland was at +1 with a harder SOS left than this season. But they went ballistic when Dame went into superstar mode and had a 13 game win streak while going 19-4 over a 23 game stretch. That was the hottest stretch of Blazer basketball since they went 31-9 to start the 2013-14 season. But in that 23 game stretch, 15 games were at home. They won't have anything close to that advantage this season I'm not discounting Portland's SOS situation. I'm just saying that the home/road imbalance is a lot bigger factor than the SOS believers seem willing to admit edit: I just looked and Portland's remaining SOS is not easy and it's not hard. Right in the middle: http://www.tankathon.com/remaining_schedule_strength
Sorry, but I think much of our differences is that you look for negatives and reasons to discount the Blazers accomplishments as I tend to look for the positives. Life is much more fun when focusing on positives rather than dwelling on the negatives, but that's just my opinion.
The continued development of Nurkic and the use the of the PnR between him and Lillard means we are better. We're still not a 2nd round team... yet.
The way we are playing now we are better. Last year it was Dame and CJ show by putting up about 50 percent. This year it really didn't change and for awhile we didn't look like we was going make the playoffs. But things started to change right around we beat Golden State we started sharing the ball more and getting more assist in the game. Better player movement and ball movement. Yes we lost close games to couple good teams. But the way we are playing right now makes us better then last year.
