...at least according to this guy. https://ripcityproject.com/2019/07/26/portland-trail-blazers-betting-over-smart-move/ by Carson Brown Portland Trail Blazers: Betting the over is the smart move After making a series of roster upgrades and enhancements, the Portland Trail Blazers are primed and ready to overachieve — at least according to Vegas. Caesar’s Palace released their NBA regular-season win projections earlier this week with the Portland Trail Blazers projected at 47.5 wins. The Trail Blazers are coming off a season where they won 53 games and return this year with a reloaded roster that added Hassan Whiteside, Kent Bazemore, Mario Hezonja and veteran big man Pau Gasol who also has two titles and endless experience to help this Blazers team. Bet the over. This Trail Blazers team is loaded. In fact, it’s probably the best supporting cast Damian Lillard has had in his career. The versatility of this roster has the potential to make this Blazers team terrifying. The roster is now host to a plethora of shooters and a big man rotation that can rebound and defend at such an extreme level especially when Jusuf Nurkic returns. The Trail Blazers are always stellar at home and their newly acquired depth could allow them to be far more successful on road trips. Rodney Hood and Kent Bazemore as the bench guards could allow for Lillard and CJ McCollum to have a lesser workload. Hood and Bazemore who are both proven guards in this league have the potential to be real game-changers for this team if they can perform with consistency. Chemistry plays a major role throughout a long rigorous NBA regular season and the Trail Blazers got it in abundance. Dame and CJ are heading into their seventh season together without a single coaching change, while Terry Stotts continues to thrive at the helm and display his ability as an NBA head coach. The Western Conference is crowded with so much talent and so many potential NBA Finals candidates. Among the five teams Vegas has projected ahead of the Trail Blazers, four of them made major roster rehauls to shake things up. Expect some slow starts from some talented rosters that will allow Portland to capitalize early. This Blazers team is poised and ready to roll for another fantastic season. Expect this resilient Portland Trail Blazers team to bulldoze right through their projected 47.5 wins milestone. Bet the over.
Last year was easy money with both the Blazers and the Spurs. This year won't be quite as easy. The Blazers should clean up again against the East but the West (outside of the Thunder and Suns) won't have many gimme wins. Every night will be a battle. They should be able to go somewhere around 24-6 against the East. That means they have to play .500 against the West which is something they struggled to do last season and I think this year will be even tougher. Lakers, Clipper, Jazz, all got quite a bit better IMO and a number of other teams improved. Only a small handful declined. Blazers will have their work cut out for them and it's not the no-brainer bet this year like it was last season.
Always easy money in the past, but this year is tough to gauge. The reduced wins projection is more a function of the tough Western Conference than the Blazers' ability.
Every single year I've followed the NBA, there are tons of fan predictions that it's going to be much harder for their team to succeed because of X, Y and Z improvements in the league. Nobody ever says it's going to be a lot easier this time. But if it were really the case that all these fans were always right, The Hulk would be our starting power forward and Thanos would be the league MVP. Things just doesn't ratchet up that way in the real world. The headlines are always about how teams have improved. It's human nature to: Think only about how headline stories have fucked you over personally. Assume the best for others and the worst for yourselves. Completely forget about players who were in their prime last year and aren't this year. So I'll take a stab at why it's really not any harder this year for the Blazers to win 53 games again: Between Kawhii, Paul George, LeBron and AD, one of those guys probably misses half or the whole year based on past injury history (or in LeBron's case the ridiculous number of games he's played.) To try to avoid that, there's going to be a shit-ton of "load management" going on, which means much easier wins for deeper teams like Portland that don't play the load management game. I don't think the Lakers will push hard for a top seed. Their goal is just to get into the playoffs healthy. It's wouldn't surprise me at all that they become the most terrifying 8th seed ever. This ties into point #1, but it also means nobody is going to be killing themselves for the #1 seed. A lot of good teams may intentionally drop late season games just to avoid a Lakers matchup (whether 6th, 7th or 8th). I see Denver leveling off, and probably dropping a few wins. Milsap is 35 now--he seemed like such a critical defensive piece in our playoff series. Jokic and Murray are a year more mature, but their defensive anchor is another year less mobile. Kevin Durant is out of our conference and out of the league for the year, and Klay Thompson won't be his old self possibly the entire season, and he's missing a fair number of games too. The Kings look surprisingly decent this year, but I think I've said that to myself probably 9 times in the past 15 years and been wrong nearly all of those times. The Harden/Westbrook chemistry experiment could very well turn two competitive teams (HOU/OKC) into one ongoing 120 decibel argument. I think people are overselling the Jazz. Obviously, Conley is a massive upgrade. But he's 32 now, and after injuries and age his DRTG was at 111 last year. Basically the same as Dame. Chris Paul started his defensive decline right around this age, and didn't have nearly the injury history. And Jeff Green? The guy is on his 9th team. Ed Davis? How is he going to get minutes with Gobert in the middle. He's not a rim defender, and he's really ideally suited to play off a center who has a perimeter shot. Will Mitchell continue to improve without handling the ball as much? It seems like he should, but then everybody thought the Rockets would be amazing with a true point guard. With so much change throughout the league of so many key personnel, a lot of teams are going to lose games early in the season just as they try to make things fit around new stars. Portland's stars are who they have been, and the template is in place for what we need our coaching and role players to do. Yes, we lost a lot of role players, but that's why they are called role players. When you lose them you plug other guys into the same roles. A lot of news has been made about our overhaul, but there's an underlying consistency to things that a lot of teams don't have right now. Tank Command. When one or more of the above (or other) potential disasters do occur, there will be tanking. Lots of tanking. Once teams give up hope the wins come easier for those who haven't. I think there are reasonably counter-arguments to any of my points, but some of them are bound to prove true. It's going to be a fun and interesting season with all these changes. But not necessarily a harder one.
