Notice This is the worst Blazer team I have seen in my lifetime.

This isn't the worst Blazers team you've ever seen.

Maybe it's the most disappointing for you, though it's a little early to decide that, in my opinion. Teams often have slow starts, or a bad few games. If the bad few games happen in the middle of a season where the team started well, it's seen as just a bad few games. When it happens at the start of the season, some fans extrapolate it out as the only way they'll play the whole season. We'll see.

But this is definitively not the worst Blazers team of the past 15-20 years. It's nowhere close.

 

The year? Fine by me.

 

It’s not easy for a small market team to get to the finals. In the last 22 years only 5 different teams from the west went to the finals.

While there are things I see in games that annoy me coaching-wise, I don’t think Stott’s has underachieved in terms of our regular season record or our playoff runs, giving our talent level.

We just haven’t had the talent to get to the finals without a lot of luck. We were over our heads just getting to the WCF.

 

Chad Doing, Dan Marang, Aaron Fentress...

Our local media sucks.

 

We have the best player in our 50 year history and it's "Well, only 5 teams have made it and it's hard so Stotts cant be doing a bad job no matter what he does since this team has gotten kinda close a couple times".

 

I'm sorry, what sucks about them? They know their stuff. Chad in particular loves the team.

Always cracks me up how guys on an Internet board whine about professional announcers and commentators who are so good at doing what we do for a lark that they get paid for it. Do you get paid to give your take, @BonesJones?

 

This is arguable. Definitely a great player but best in 50 years might not be the case?
Dame is special for sure.

 

Agreed it's not the worst...but that may be the most disappointing opening night effort given the talent available. Then again, slow starts are this teams persona far too often.

 

Except what you put in quotes is not at all what I said. You flipped it on it's head. I didn't say it's hard so Stott's can't be a bad coach. I said, it's hard so you can't simply say that Stott's must be a bad coach because he didn't make the finals in 10 years. You can't expect to make the finals once in every 10 years without exceptional talent. Yes, we have the best player in our history but we both know that's not enough. GSW has Curry - do we think they stand any chance of making the finals this year?

Here are the line-up's Dame had to get through in the past 10 years.
Durant, Westbrook, Harden, Ibaka
Parker, Duncan, Ginobili, Kawhi
Curry, Klay, Draymond, Iggy, Durant
Lebron, AD, bunch of good defenders and decent 3 point shooters.

Good coach or bad coach - does it look like we ever had the talent around Dame to expect to beat any of these teams, let alone the other teams we had to get through to even face those teams.

 

Expecting to beat any of those? Probably not. To get swept out year after year after year including to the lower seeded #6 Pelicans? That seems not very good.

 

Preseason doesn't mean jack shit. During preseason the coach is trying out the new guys to see which ones can be developed and which ones need to go. No, I'm more worried about our one counter which is disconcerting but still it's only one game and it's in the first part of the season.
I think they're going to come out of this funk but I'm a little less certain than I was before Utah.

 

You must not have ever seen the Fail Blazers.

 

Actually, I do.

 

That game was disheartening but when has the first game of the season dictated how the season is going to go? There are a lot of variables and very few controls. The defense is trying to be new, although we failed miserably Stotts has said they are going to try and incorporate DJJ's slashing into the offense, I guess CJ, Melo and Enes not passing is a control but it's a really bad reality. The fact is this team is more talented than any team we've had since LaMarcus left except we have better competitors than LaMarcus and Nic were. I still have high hopes for this team.

 

It’s not that they lost, it’s HOW they lost. Getting blown out on your home floor during the opening game of the season, looking lethargic and lacking passion is not a recipe for long term success. I still have concerns about the roster construction (mainly whether McCollum is the best fit at starting 2G) but this is all about effort, and that is almost always a symptom of poor, ineffectual coaching. Say what you want, this team has taken on the lax persona of the dimwit behind the bench.

 

That is such a telling statement. That you have to TRY to incorporate slashing into an offense is unbelievable. And given how athletic DJJ is, even more so. That there is no slashing in the offense now is a complete fail.

 

This team might just claim that name.

 

Funny, so do I, and it's not from YouTube ads.

 

Ok, but first of all you are making a different point. Your point might make Stotts a bad coach, but not making the finals for 10 straight years does not.

If you look at how we got swept by the Pelicans you can surely make the argument that Stotts was totally out-coached. My first reaction is to agree. Stotts runs a one-dimensional offense which has an achilles heel and New Orleans exposed it badly. On the other hand I honestly can't imagine us actually punishing that trap with the personnel we had. They had two defensive guards. Dame's a short point guard. He's not a fantastic passer. The passes out of the trap were weak. Nurk, CJ, Aminu, Harkless were not capable of punishing in the 4 v 3 with a tiny advantage. AD was there at the rim to block shots and long enough to bother 3's from a distance. So maybe yes maybe no, you can lay that all on Stotts,

As far as our playoff results as a whole: If you accept that the Blazer's have performed up to our talent in the regular season then our playoff record is also on par with our talent. Under Stotts we are 20-36 in playoff games which is 36%. Sounds abysmal but that's actually about what is expected when a 47-35 team faces a 57-25 team, which was our average matchup.

In individual series we've won more than our fair share of the close matchups (4-2):
2013-2014 we beat the Rockets who had the same record as us.
2014-2015 we lost to the Grizzles who had 4 more regular season wins than us.
2015-2016 we beat the Thunder who had 9 more regular season wins than us.
2017-2018 we lost to the Pelicans who had 1 less regular season win than us.
2018-2019 we best the Thunder who had 4 less regular season wins than us.
2018-2019 we beat Denver who had 1 more regular season win than us.

The rest of the match-ups I don't think we stood much chance - Spurs (1) Warriors (3) Lakers (1).

So overall it looks to me like we've performed roughly up to our talent level under Stotts both regular season & playoffs. Many of the arguments made against Stotts seem valid to me. I'm just not sure that Stotts doesn't know better than what seems right to me. So I'm not saying anyone is wrong about Stotts, just I'm not personally convinced.

 

well said