"but when it comes down to it, those are mismatches that illuminate how short Portland GM Neil Olshey has fallen in terms of putting a championship team around Lillard, who scored 17 points over the two overtimes on 6-of-8 shooting while his teammates scored a combined 2 points on 1-of-14 shooting. The collective talent just isn't there. The Blazers are good, but not great, and they haven't take enough risks -- if any at all -- to honestly pursue the latter. Portland is a tough place to draw players, trades aren't easy, and there were a lot of cap restraints for a lot of years following the 2016 offseason debacle (Olshey's doing). But this is a results business. Lillard is one of the best players on the planet, and every year he's asked to work miracles to win first-round series; sometimes just to make the playoffs. You don't have to win a championship to be great, but if you're as great as Lillard, you at least deserve a legitimate shot, especially in the post-Warriors era" ********************************* "Instead, Lillard now resides in the annals of dubious honors as the only player in history to put up at least 55 points and 10 assists in a loss, regular season or playoffs. Think about that. It had never happened. Until now. As I said at the top, I have zero idea how the Blazers bounce back from this for Game 6 on Thursday. If they win that game, it will be one of the most resilient wins ever. I'm not going to rule it out. I don't rule anything out with Lillard. For obvious reasons. But for now, this one stings if you're a Blazers fan. If you're a Nuggets fan, you're euphoric. If you're Malone, you're thankful, because you got away with one. Or two, actually. If you're just an NBA fan, man, you just witnessed a true classic. There's just no other way to say it. That game, for so many reasons, was un-freaking-believable" https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/...ight-and-its-a-microcosm-of-a-larger-failure/ ********************************** obviously, this is the cue for more Olshey-apologizing....blahblahblah...."he has taken risks"....blahblahblah...."Dame wouldn't let him make trades or fire the coach"....blahblahblah...."Portland has great talent!"....blahblahblah...."he's great at drafting the 2nd round!" Portland wasted Dame's 'game for the ages' last night, and Olshey has wasted 6 years of Dame's greatness. And unless Seattle pulls it's head out of it's collective ass, Olshey will waste Dame's 10th season too
And people wonder why I have been so mad at the team this year. You can call me a negative nancy. You can call me a hater. You can call me a downer. It has been extremely obvious from the first game of the season that this team wasn't going to do it. That we wasted another year of Dame. And that pisses me off so much. I didn't get to see Walton (I wasn't alive) and I barely got to watch Clyde (I was pretty young) but I have gotten to see us completely piss away Dame's prime and it makes me so angry at the ownership, the GM, and the coaching staff.
Good. I'll tell you again. And again. And again until this team actually does something to actually put a contender around Dame.
Cool. We want the same results, we will just get there on different paths. Angry and complaining, or sitting back and enjoying the ride.
Dude, it would be one thing if we had a good team and there was a player/team that simply was too good. I think of the Jazz or the Suns with Malone/Stockton and Barkley. Really good teams, did everything they could. They just couldn't get past MJ. I could live with that. But we have been running with essentially the same crew for six years now. Neil has gone all-in on Dame/CJ with Stotts as the coach, despite the fact that it was very obvious to anyone who pays attention that this core will not get it done. So it doesn't make you even a little mad that we have this absolutely amazing player, a caliber of player that we might not see again in our lifetime on this team, and we're just doing nothing? We're not even trying to put a team around him to contend?
Me too. I’m 34 and only remember the Rasheed Wallace years. Which were great honestly. But we will never have another Dame ever. Sad.. Feels like last night was an end of an era that never happened
I would have agreed last night with the Outsider that there was zero chance they will win Thursday. But I'm already recovering emotionally and this is a team that always seems to bounce back. I think there is a good chance they win. Not so sure about a 7th game though.
But why tho? It’s literally Jokic/MPJ and a bunch of backup guys. Why is that we can’t beat this short handed team when we’re completely healthy
if dame was in year 5 at 27 yrs old, believe me I would do nothing but re-watch his highlights from last night. but he's in year 9 and almost 31. the window to win big is NOW. the feeling of wasting away chances of contending during the prime of the best player in franchise history makes it difficult to "enjoy the ride." and it hurts like hell to see the likes of Denver/Utah/Phoenix lap us in their climb to the top of the conference while we keep running it back with the same coach/roster construction as we had 5 yrs ago while we were losing the first round even then. Dame has climbed from a borderline all star to a bonafide HOF player and we have no more wins now than we did earlier in his career.... it gets frustrating.
It’s not that you’re negative. It’s that you’re wrong. This isn’t the worst team ever. And we didn’t go 3-9 to end the season.
I come on here to vent because otherwise I'm venting to an empty room. I guess if it bothers you, your choice is to put me on ignore.
No, we all need to vent, myself included. Just saying you will keep repeating something until Blazers management makes changes, I mean, not much we can do.
I keep hoping that if enough people voice their complete displeasure with how the team is going, they will make some significant changes.
Neil is a coward on top of being one of the worst GMs in Blazer history. Pritchard was annoying and made mistakes but he still talked to the media on a regular basis. The Clipper Fan Olshey hides from the media — and accountability.
