Notice Nearly 30 years old, the Moda Center is the oldest NBA arena to not have undergone major renovation

Capture the Flagg!

 

I agree with 2 or 3 more lotto trips. There are 14 lotto spots. To not be in the lotto Portland has to make the playoffs. I am sure most here agree Portland is three years away from the playoffs. Get number one in the next draft but hope for top three. Have Ant/Grant moved after the next draft at minimum, hopefully much sooner. The draft after most likely be in the 5-10 pick range and the draft after that 11-14, fighting for play in at minimum. It is a realistic progression.Draft the right players and Portland is back in playoff position. SIMPLE!

 

Easily one of the best taken care of in the league! Bunch of newer ones that are very run down.

 

Don’t the Wizards need a new arena more than anyone?

I’ve been to the Forum, Staples, Wizards Stadium, and of course our stadium.

 

"What would you do different?"
"Hmmmm ??"
If putting the pressure of NBA management back onto Blazer fans doesn't work... follow it up with:
-throw the city of Portland under the bus
-gaslight the state of Oregon
-blame Olshey
-blame Lillard
-blame the new CBA
-blame the other teams for getting better
-we can blame Scott Brooks now
-nobody wants to be head coach here
*hot new take -blame OKC for making rebuilds look easy

 

We could have two already.

 

When we know we have two I'll be happy with filling the team out around them.

They'll need very good players to play with as well. We don't have enough talent quite yet.

 

I’ve been to all of them except for Chase and newest Bucks home and while Little Caesars (Detroit) is the nicest, Moda is my favorite.

 

I know I'm going to regret this but, what does the bolded mean? BTW, my reply is not at you personally, but at this idea...

Do this mean every fan that goes to games or pays for home viewership?
Does not complaining here....repeatedly....mean that a fan is "Ok", with sucking? Please don't tell me that complaining here has any effect on the teams decision making. Again, not singling you out, I am genuinely confused at this.

 

Really the team will not suck for the next 6 years. Yes next year will be a tank job but my bet is they are in the playoffs the year after that and close to contending in 3-4 years.

 

Did I miss the thread about the Moda Center being sold?

 

Complaining has absolutely nothing to do with my comment.

I was commenting on the strategy by a few fans that essentially the most important goal the Blazer front office should have is finding a "star". And the best way for a small market team like Portland to get a star is through the draft. So whether or not it takes 1 year, 4 years, or even 6 years....we should not worry about winning games (or keeping players who are not young and would hurt our lottery chances) because the best way to land a star is by sucking enough to help land a top 3 pick. I hate putting words in their mouths so they can correct me if I am off base.

Now while I can see the logic in this, I don't like it. I think it is a bit risky for a small market team to suck that many years in a row because as we saw last year at the end of the season, even die-hard fans on this board admitted they stopped watching the games. Now add another 6 years of that, which coincidentally is around the same time the lease is up. Thus my remark about it being risky. I understand that it should not take that long to land a "star", but what if it did? You need good players to entertain the fan base, or you will lose them.

 

that is just an arbitrary cut-off line that makes no sense, at least it doesn't to me. Minny needed about 15 chances to land KAT and Edwards. One of those "3 chances" for Portland was a 7th pick in what is almost universally considered one of the worst drafts in the last 15 years. Boston had 5 chances in the lottery to build their championship team

what Portland absolutely needs is an all-pro player...a top-10 talent...a superstar....and much more. We don't even know if any of Sharpe-Scoot-Clingan will even climb to all-star level, but the early returns are realistically disappointing and optimistically mixed.

* in his 2nd season, KAT averaged 25-12-3; a PER of 26; TS% .618
* as a rookie, Anthony Edwards averaged 19-5-3; in his 2nd season, 21-5-4
* in his 2nd season, Haliburton averaged 15-4-8 while shooting 41.4% on three's
* in his 3rd season, Tatum averaged 21-7-3 with a PER over 20
* in his 2nd season, SGA averaged 19-6-3; in his 3rd season, 24-5-6
* in his 2nd season, Durant averaged 25-7-3; in his 3rd season, 30-8-3
* in his 2nd season, Booker averaged 22-3-3; in his 3rd season, 25-5-5

Sharpe will be in his 3rd season, Scoot his 2nd, and one of them will be stuck on the bench behind Ant

the worst thing the Blazers can do is shut down 'the tank' prematurely, end up with no perennial all-star talent, and get locked in that futile purgatory of play-in/end-of-lottery/1st-round-exit. Lousy drafts picks and no realistic upside

 

Yep just keep losing until we find that star. Then hope we can get that second star so they can win something. I am sure the fans of whatever city the Blazers are in by that time will appreciate it.

 

Great post. And pretty much all of those players were given the reins or had a point guard who was a willing distributor.

They were not forced to "earn" their minutes behind middleing vets like Ant and Grant.

This fear of trading people who have proven they're not stars makes no sense to me. They need to be gone and we need to be drafting high picks as soon as possible and for as long as it takes.

This was the decision we made in trading Dame. It was a burn it down and suck for a long time thing. That's the only way teams like this can become legitimate playoffs teams with a chance at winning a title.

It sucks. And I didn't want to trade Dame. But here we are. We only have one option if we want to compete in a reasonable amount of time. I don't want to get it wrong. We need to stock up on draft capital.

We must get rid of the ball stoppers. They will 100% hurt our team in the long run.

The only vets that we should consider keeping right now are great defenders and willing passers and players with all-star potential.

And even they should be available for trade for the right draft capital. We need to be getting the highest draft picks we possibly can until we know we have two or three all stars with at least one having the potential to be a superstar.

 

If Portland can't deal with losing as long as it takes to be competitive then they don't deserve a team.

Portland hasn't done its part to be a destination city. Portland hasn't done its part They have enough billionaires to make big enough offers to keep the team here.

I sincerely hope the team doesn't move. But I'm not going to hope that they never compete for a championship just to keep a treadmilling team in Portland.

And for the record, I don't think The Trail Blazers are going anywhere. There isn't a bigger market out there that is more likely to support a team than Portland.

I don't think the NBA would support a move. I think they want another team in Seattle and they want to keep a team in Portland.

Having only one Northwest team is not good for the league.

If Minnesota can lose for decades without losing their team there's no reason Portland can't as well. Not that we should have to, but it may take a little while. I think we're good enough and drafting that we can do this in five or six mid to high lotto picks. I think we got a good start on it with the three that we already have. We need top three pics the next two or three seasons.

And we need to get our middling vets out of the way.

 

I agree. The Trail Blazers are not leaving Portland. Ever.