Seriously. Dude had 35 point triple double in 25 minutes tonight. And he’s 20. Jesus Christ. If voting were today, I’d give him MVP with LeBron and Giannis close behind. Damn. The MVP race is tough this year. How many points does Harden need to score?
Relax. Houston and SA started 11-14 last year and made playoffs comfortably. Jazz were 8-10 and won 50 games. 1994 Pacers were 16-23 and made ECF. Cheeks had a Blazers team that started terribly and made playoffs. I’d have to look it up. And you can’t overreact to the teams that have started strong. Last year at this time, the Grizzlies were 12-5, the best record in the West, and they collapsed before trading Gasol and finished 33-49. Bottom line is, it’s early. I wouldn’t be surprised if we finish with 55 wins. Hang in there.
Tanking will do nothing constructive for our team at this point...our schedule has been brutal and will get easier....our injured Nurk will be back and some other needle mover on a team that's winning will probably get injured before the playoffs...we got our injuries early and the win loss column reflects that...we'll also probably make an impact move at the deadline with Nurk on the roster, we'll make the playoffs and not waste a year of primetime Dame.....I think tanking is for losers....if we suck after the break, we won't have to tank, we'll just get beat but for fuck's sake....try to win every game is the real option….after that let the cards fall where they may...if we aren't making the playoffs, we can still get a good draft pick...Zach should be back by playoff time as well and I'd say our expiring contracts will be traded for a roster upgrade at the deadline..better to struggle now then after December
Not starting him next to Nurk...between Hood and Nurk you can hide Melo's defense..and Melo can rebound but he's here to make shots when teams take Dame and CJ out of the offense...Nas can learn a lot from Melo ...footwork and shooting especially
I agree with you in terms of what it signals for their mindset. Of course, signing Melo doesn't actually make them less tank-worthy. Lillard does. There can be no tank with Lillard on the team, unless he suffered a season-ending injury which would be awful.
I’d give it to Giannis with Luka close behind but could go either way. Anyway it’s early. We’ll see who can keep it up. Amazing and heartening that an unatheletic (sp?) guy can do that.
Once again, you can't just decide to tank when you have good players. If they lose all their games because they're bad then they can accomplish the same goal of a tank but that's not tanking. You still haven't answered why Dame and CJ would agree to lose on purpose in the middle of their primes.
You could see Houston and Jazz were good teams though, just struggling to make things work at the beginning. Same can't be said about us, we look disjointed, we lack defense and we are honestly just not that good. It seems that defensive edge we lost by letting Harkless and Aminu go was more important than we understood.
Correct. Tanking isn't asking your players to lose on purpose, it's building a team that has no realistic chance of winning games. We can't do that as long as we have CJ and Dame, we will still win here and there. With our lack of defense it's hard to imagine us going over .500 though, we will probably be a bottom 10 team anyway unless Nurkic returns ahead of schedule.
You cannot ask them to lose, but you might choose to not sacrifice any pieces to help them win. This team cannot do much as it is right now. It needs something good in the deadline. You don't do that and here is your top10 pick. Who knows maybe we even hit the jackpot with the new lottery draw setup.
Tanking isn't an option with Dame around. Blowing up the team is, though. And I don't think it'll just be Whiteside made available. It wouldn't surprise me to see CJ, Little and/or Simons shipped. Portland needs to really shake things up, making CJ the obvious target. But it also needs veteran, established talent if we want to get the most out of Dame's peak years. Other teams who are legitimately tanking and wanting to dump a star aren't going to want CJ.
What? Aren’t we struggling to make things work? Those teams were veteran teams that should’ve come out of the gate swinging. Utah was same as us. They had a road heavy schedule and couldn’t win at home. All teams that are losing look bad.
I'm thinking they are in a tough stretch and they are still tinkering to get things right. They just opened up another roster spot so another pickup could help quite a bit. It's a long season. The games they have played they could easily be .500 at this point.
Yeah mentioned this in another thread but my fear is trading picks and young players to get Griffin or Love. That'd be tragic.
I call Bullshit. I say Zach and Nurk being hurt have way more to do with our defensive issues. I don't know why since our slow start everybody here is forgetting that Aminu and Harkless were literally unplayable against Denver
