I think it is Olshey's fault that the team is so specific with Dame and CJ at guards that when we get an injury to the defensive forwards the whole thing falls apart.
I don’t know what to believe in anymore. I (seriously) saw the Olshey family at Bridgeport this last Sunday. He was dressed in sweats and looked like a shlubby suburban Sunday dad AND they were coming out of the parking structure (at one on the places in PDX that actually has valet parking for gawd’s sake!!). I felt like I was in a bad Wizard of Oz movie. Pay no attention to the man behind the three piece suit and carefully sculpted hair. He’s just like one of us (minus Mom’s basement). It kinda sorta put things a little more into perspective in a weird way......
you know, Portland closed the season on a hot streak and made it to the WCF with Kanter filling in for Nurkic, and Kanter was playing injured at the end Nurkic being out was already baked into the first half of the season. So, while he's injured, I'm not sure I'm buying that as much of an excuse, especially considering Portland has Whiteside as a replacement. Besides Nurkic, the only player out is Zach, until Dame last night. In terms of winshares, Dame and Whiteside have accounted for 4 of Portland's 5 wins. And Zach is only 6th on the team in winshares/48. Simons is higher and he's only credited with 0.5 winshares the point being that I think people are leaning too heavily on the injury excuse. A bunch of teams are missing important players: Lakers: AD 1, Kuzma 4, Rondo 10, Bradley 4, Daniels 4 Houston: Westbrook 2, Capela 2, House 3, Hartenstein 11, Gordon 5 and has had surgery and will miss 6 more weeks LAC: Kawhi 5, Paul George 11, Beverly 2, Shamet 4 Minn: Wiggins 3, KAT 2, Teague 4 Phx: Ayton 12, Rubio 3, Baynes 1 Sac: Fox 5, Bagley 12, Ariza 2, Farrel 5 Pels: Holiday 2, Ingram 4, Ball 6, Redick 1, Favors 5, Moore 5, Okafor 5 Celtics: Brown 3, Hayward 5, Theis 2, Kanter 7 Tor: Lowry 5, Ibaka 5, RHJ 7 and all those teams have better records than Portland, in most cases, much better. Portland would be better if Zach was healthy, but the way they've been playing I doubt Zach would have added more than a win...at most. Again, we all knew Nurkic was out till 2020. But the expectations for the rest of the roster have been cratered by the reality of watching them perform as badly as they have. Portland only has 2 players above the league average PER of 15.0. The same two players (Dame/Hassan) are the only ones with a positive BPM (last year they had 9). Once again, those two Blazers are the only ones with a winshare/48 over .100 (last season, they had 10). Certainly, those numbers are skewed by the winning percentages of the two teams, but mostly, that's not skew...that's a bunch of inconsistent Blazers playing like scrubs
He drafted Dame, CJ, Simons, and Little and hit on all 4. He traded for Bazemore and Whiteside, both of whom are attractive expiring contracts for trade season in Februrary or sooner.
Olshey could've drafted Harrison Barnes and Michael Carter-Williams and Moritz Wagner. Olshey has been a top shelf GM for us. We got to the fucking WCF last year! This season ain't over yet.
If you want to talk bad general management, look at the Kings. They passed on Damian Lillard, Donovan Mitchell, and Luka Doncic
I blame the fans for unrealistic expectations on a team with 8 new players......dash in some injuries and this is what you get.
The NBA has never had so much talent across the league that I can remember.....I'm not going to kick the Blazers when they're down...Popovich is below us in the standings ...the west is not an easy conference at all. Lot of season left
Year after year, poor Olshey gets blamed for not doing anything, and I for one am sick of it. This season, he finds himself, lacking both starting forwards Aminu and Harkless, who were our defensive core since the similar disappearance of Aldridge and Batum 4 long years ago, trying to the best of his abilities to overcome this hole in which he finds himself. It's like waking into a shocking bad dream after a 4-year vacation in Hawaii. Would you want to go through such an unexpected surprise? Then have some sympathy.
yeah, and the fact that I believe last year they overachieved, leading people to believe that was normal and expected. Of course, most people dont want to acknowledge the overachieving and hand out credit for that.
This is by far the most practical approach as his Harkless, Meyers, and Turner for Baze and Whiteside exchange SHOULD only have been an attempt to kick the tires until they are unloaded in February. His two biggest summers in terms of serious transactions were the summer of 2016 and 2019. If he doesn't hit a home run this February, it's going to be hard for me to be optimstic he'll put together a great summer plan.
So true, so so true. The overachieving acknolwedgment would require many to back off their long-term scapegoats. This roster was not near the top 4 in the NBA last year, yet that is where we ended up.
