Now that all the NBA off-season dates have passed and we likely have the Blazers roster rotational players finalized what is your prediction of where the Blazers will finish in the West?
Haslem had a pretty good ranking of top5 teams on NBA today.... 4/5 are in the West 5 Minny 4 Cavs 3 Nuggets 2 Rockets 1 Thunder Tim Legler agreed but flipped 2/3 West will be brutal next season.
We've traded our best guard and agreed to a buyout for our best center. I have no problems with either move. But this team is not making the playoffs. Any Flaggs in next year's draft?
I agree, but on the flip side you could argue that: 1. Holiday even with his injuries was clearly still a better/more impactful player than Simons last year and likely will still be better this season as well. 2. We were 19-23 without Ayton last year... and 17-23 with him. Addition by subtraction perhaps? I do think the West continues to get better and better, so I don't see us moving up in the standings.
Confused when people always do the, “wins with him and wins without him” thing. Was our roster exactly the same in both situations? And what was the strength of schedule. Missing 3 starters playing at OKC with him would be a loss. Missing just him and us playing against Utah at home would be a win……. Never liked that “stat”.
Not with that attitude we're not. What if half the league tears their Achilles? We could be in the right place at the right time.
Last season the 9th seed in the west was 2 games under .500. We need both Scoot and Shaedon to pop big time along with Clingan and Yang to both be serviceable bigs by the trade deadline. If that all happens we can win 44 games and that should be enough to be the 8th or 9th seed. We need to get into the playoffs this sesaon both as a gauge for how our young core is doing and to be able to move on from Olshey's last gift to the team. I think we end up in the ninth seed, we win both play-in games and we win two games in the first round to take our first steps toward contention. The core needs to be Scoot, Shaedon, Tou, Deni, Clingan, Yang and some guys that we don't have yet hopefully three and D guys.
I think at the very least it implies that he didn't have a big, tangible impact on our performance last season. 42 games is a significant sample size without him.
Next year has some very good players. Probably 3 who stand out above the rest. Joe is hoping we can nab one of them at 11
In the west, LAL LAC SAS and GSW could all be strong too. The teams with lots of issues/unknowns are NOP, SAC, UTA, MEM, and POR. I assume Utah is tanking and the Pels could be a mess. If Zion is healthy, though, he could be an easy all star. POR would have to maintain their strong defense they ended the season with AND have MIP type seasons from Scoot or Shae AND Deni as a borderline all star caliber guy.
I really don't believe Memphis got worse and they won 48 games last season. In fact, they essentially traded Bane for KCP, Ty Jerome, and Cole Anthony. If Ja doesn't combust Memphis could be pretty good Kings? If Sabonis-LaVine-Derozan-Monk can develop some synergy, they might be better, and they were 4 wins better than Portland last year
Crazy that we were 14th in the West betting odds. Teams I think are clearly better than us; 1 OKC 2 Houston 3 Denver 4 Wolves 5 Warriors Teams I expect to be better than us but wouldn't be surprised if we we're better than; 6 Spurs 7 Mavs 8 Clippers 9 Lakers 10 Grizz Teams I think are worse than us 12 Suns 13 Kings 14 Pels 15 Jazz My guess is one team in the top 5 has injuries or some other issue. I think we will try pretty hard all season and pickup wins especially late in the year when half the league stops trying. I'll go with 8th
