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

Will not disagree with you here. The hockey assist should be counted.

 

I'm not the one to defend Melo, but even with him, this team is no where close to the worst blazer team ever; no matter how you define team.

It was a drastict, emotional, overraction.

 

I'm glad you said it because I was thinking this too. I feel like being the best team in the league is the expectation for far too many people here, despite this roster being nowhere near the best roster in the league.

 

Where did I say that going undefeated is my expectation? I’m ok with a loss if we played hard. We’re going to lose. I just don’t want this team looking disinterested again like they did against the jazz and rockets.

 

Guys just stepped up on D tonight. Also, some guys hit some shots they hadn't been in a couple weeks. Don't worry, we'll be bad again Wednesday right?

 

I don't know, is Melo coming back?

 

Which part did you disagree with?

The defense and ball movement has stepped up immensely, largely in part because Melo isn't here and CJ is actually moving the ball. I acknowledged in the first post that the team has a ton of talent. I'm still extremely skeptical that Stotts won't fuck things up when Melo comes back. The team needs a trade, or they need to cut Melo. Either way, we saw what the rotation should be tonight. We don't need Melo anymore.

 

Bad? You are downplaying this again. We've been bad many season.

WORST BLAZER TEAM is the standard we need to achieve.

 

The title of this thread.

"Worst season opener I've seen in my lifetime." might have been a little less dramatic.

I'm just ribbing you in good fun.

 

And if we get knocked out in the first round again, how will you feel? I made it abundantly clear that this isn't about winning games in the regular season. This is about pissing away Dame's prime and wasting a talented roster. So you guys can bump this thread after every win if you like, but this thread won't be banished to the shadow realm until we exercise our demons.

 

If we get knocked out in the 1st round I'll likely feel this team was better than the 14 season we did not make the playoffs.

I think this roster is between 3rd-7th most talented in the West. In terms of having multiple stars, which I find incredibly important, I would rank it even worse. That means I expect this is a team that should get bounced in the 1st or 2nd round.

If you're implying this team needs to make some finals run to not be the worst blazer team you've ever seen, then we define "worst team" differently.

I'm ribbing you out of fun, not to hurt any feelings. I will stop if you ask. I enjoy your posts.

 

The truth is I don't think that RoCo and Jones were stepping up, I think that's just their regular intensity and what we'll come to expect from them. What I do think was an aberration was the shooting from those two. I doubt they go 0-11 any other time this season. They're both better than that. So I thought we played what will be good defense for this team and I thought guys missed some shots that they aren't going to be missing.

If you were saying that Gary won't be that hot every night, I'm sure he won't but I think he'll likely shoot around 40% from three this season, no matter how high his usage is. Dame was very efficient shooting but not as a facilitator and CJ was efficient facilitating but not as a shooter. Those odd shortcomings can be chalked up to the Lakers D. I didn't think Enes did anything shockingly well tonight but he played his role well. I thought Nurk was subpar until his rotation in the 4th. Hoodie seems to be starting to show up, which is really cool but he didn't add too much tonight.

I think this is just the team that we have. We're going to be a really good team and compete with a bunch of other good teams for the 2-6 seeds in the West. I think we'll come away with HCA... if that's a thing by then. I also think we're the worst match up for your Lakers.

 

How quickly things change 2 games later. Not you, lots of people.

The playoffs are a totally different animal. It's where the teams with multiple all-stars, generally over 6'7" with length and two way abilities have the most success.

 

The difference to me is akin to a draft pick.

If you take a dude in the second round and he's fucking horrible, no big deal. No loss. Would we call a second round pick that doesn't pan out the worst pick in the history of our franchise? No. Of course not. There are plenty of years where the quality of the team would fall under that "second round draft pick" analogy, but we knew the team was going to be trash and had very low expectations.

So which picks do people tend to list as the worst in the history of the franchise? Bowie over Jordan? Martell Webster over Chris Paul? Oden over Durant? Why are those picks always considered the worst in franchise history? Webster played for the team for many years. Oden might have had a great career if he wasn't injured. Bowie ended up getting us Buck Williams. They're considered massive busts because they were high lottery picks and we had high expectations for them. Maybe the Bowie pick wouldn't be listed so often if the Blazers had gone on to win a couple titles with Drexler. Nobody faults the Rockets for taking Hakeem.

So yes, if this team busts and we don't make a deep playoff run, I will seriously consider it the worst, or one of the worst teams in franchise history. Dame is arguably the best player we have ever had, and we have managed to piss away most of his prime with Terry Stotts and CJ McCollum. We went out and got some really good role players and now it feels like Terry is more concerned with keeping Melo happy. It's extremely frustrating to watch.

 

I hear what you're saying. It appears the title should've been "If we keep this up, this will be the most underachieving team in my lifetime"

Imagine a post titled "Dame is the worst shooter I've seen in my lifetime" after his scoreless 1st half against Utah. Nobody would read that as "Dame has so much talent, but if he keeps this up all season, he'd be the biggest letdown."

 

Firstly..... who said you could start making serious posts? Bad dog! Bad!

Secondly, the expectations will still be dashed. This team had high hopes going into the season. If we finish 8th and get knocked out, that's also a massive bust.

 

I covered this in an earlier post, but it depends on how you gauge success. To me, if this team gets swept out of the first round, that means we fundamentally failed as a team, despite having immense talent. That would make them the worst "team."

The only other team that I personally seen with this much talent was the 99-00 team, which was actually more talented overall. That team, in my opinion, was fucked by the refs and the NBA. They choked and should have won a title, but man we had to overcome a lot of bullshit against the Lakers.

 

Yeah, I've been preaching patience. I'm sure this isn't some breakthrough that we won't take a step back from at some point in the next two weeks but this also isn't our ceiling by any means. We're getting there but the way this team is set up is really nice. I love what our two starting forwards bring and how it kind of balances with the strengths and weaknesses of our starting back court. I think Nurk is going to be a beast really soon. I also think that the analysts were right, we do have the deepest team in the league. I've been thinking that but it's still early in the season so there should be more hiccups. We just need to be patient, let this team find itself and get into shape and a flow. We'll be really good in the regular season.

I still think we have a problematic back court. I do think however that our forwards are the right guys to fuck up those 6"7'+ two way players. So it should be interesting. I do think that without any major moves we'll get bounced in the second round and would hope that would bring major moves.