Event With the 16th pick, Blazers have selected Hansen Yang

My statement was about every team in the league. Not just 10 teams that you pulled out of your ass.

There are at least five or six teams with better talent situations than we currently have.

Those five or six teams are going to be ahead of us, no matter what we do, unless we get incredibly, outlandishly lucky.

That could happen. It almost certainly won't happen. But it could...

 

Oh you meant only 5 teams better? I thought you were saying Blazers were worse than all but 5-6 teams in the league.

Well no shit we're not a top 5 NBA team... If that's your barometer your just about never going to be happy with any strategy.

How many years have the Blazers had a top5 roster since Walton injury in 78?

Probably 3 years with Clyde
1 or 2 with Sheed in the SPAM era

That just seems like an arbitrary pointless goalpost.

 

I didn't say better. I said a better talent situation. Meaning we have no hope at competing.

We're literally hoping to make the play-in so we can maybe get out of the first round.

Basically, almost maybe some day close to where we were in Dame's prime. Maybe.

That's probably our ceiling.

I'll be ecstatic if we can do better than that, though.

 

Just as an aside, I don't know if the 77-78 Blazers had a top five roster; I'd say they probably weren't. The 76-77 team didn't. But that Blazer team that was running away with things before the Walton injury in 77-78 still was, in terms of pure talent, behind:

-- the 76ers (Dr. J, McGinnis, Doug Collins, Bibby, World Free, Darryl Dawkins) ... hard to argue the best compilation of talent.
-- the Bullets (Hayes, Unseld, Bing, Chenier, Dandridge and several good young role players)
-- the Nuggets (David Thompson, Dan Issel, Bobby Jones, Darnell Hillman)
-- the Knicks (Earl the Pearl, Bob McAdoo, Lonnie Shelton, Spencer Haywood)
-- the Spurs (George Gervin, James Silas, Larry Kenon, Louie Dampier
-- the Bucks (Marques Johnson, Junior Bridgeman, Kent Benson, Brian Winters, David Meyers, Quinn Buckner and a very young Alex English)
-- the Bulls (Norm Van Lier, Artis Gilmore, Scott May, Cazzie Russell)
-- the Suns (Paul Westphal, Alvan Adams, Walter Davis, Gar Heard)
-- the Lakers (Kareem, Jamaal Wilkes, Norm Nixon, Adrian Dantley, Charlie Scott, Lou Hudson, Kenny Carr ... how this team only won 45 games is criminal)
-- the Jazz (Pistol Pete, Truck Robinson, Gail Goodrich, Slick Watts)

 

Great research and details.

But the way Walton was playing he was the dominant best player in the league. Think of Jokic the last few years. Or a peak LeBron/MJ. A healthy Walton alone basically made that a top5 roster. They ran away with the best record at 50-10. Still had two other all-stars in Lucas, Hollins.

I mean I think the defending champs, unless they have injury or Kawhi leaving or such, are basically always a top5 roster. Or close enough to top5 to be a contender where it doesn't matter.

 

I don't see how you can claim a team is outside the top5 today - they then have no hope of competing soon.

Thunder had a losing record two years ago.

Suns missed the playoffs and the next year made the finals.

Heat made the finals as the 5th and 7th seed recently.

Pacers last month got to game7 of the finals only winning 50 games in the weak East.

We've seen a lot of parity and teams quickly flipping from average to dominant to average like never before in NBA history. Plenty of small market success too.

Will the Blazers do the same and contend soon? Odds are probably no - it's still a 30 team league. But we're not in some era where it's required to tank beyond 3-4 years as the Blazers have done to rebuild.

 

Thanks. I actually had been watching and playing the game for a few years by the time this season happened. It wasn't so much having to research it as having lived through it.

 

Yeah, I wasn't born. First Blazers I followed was Detroit finals in 3rd grade.

 

All of those teams had better talent than we do.

Yes, if you don't get extremely lucky or have any other assets you need to tank longer than 3 or 4 years to give yourself a legit shot at contending.

Of course, if you have the best front office in the league you could probably make enough great trades or find enough diamonds in the rough (including a genius coach) to overcome it.

I'm not convinced we have one of the best front offices in the league. I would love it if they would prove they are though.

 

That Blazers team had the best player in the world in his prime before Walton went down. As well as one of the toughest players ever in his prime who was also a 4 time All Star (Mo Lucas). And an incredible coach.

If we had two All Star bigs in their prime and a genius coach I would be a lot more optimistic.

 

I just don't think an NBA team can tank endlessly in a productive way. At a point even if you get an MVP your culture will be so shot your not winning anything. That's why so many #1 overall picks that's won titles didn't do it with the losing team that drafted them.

Blazers tanking for 3-4 years was plenty. If anything I'm concerned it was too much for the development of Scoot/Sharpe/etc. I certainly don't want to see more of it next season.

Could all of Camara/Deni/Scoot/Sharpe/Clingan/Yang/etc all fail to be key players needed on a contending team? Sure, they might not be good enough. Or they might improve and be a solid core that only needs one final big move to contend. I really have no idea. But I think the Blazers should pivot to give them a chance at winning. Deni/Camara proved to me their worth that chance. Scoot Sharpe have ups and downs. I'm super excited we don't have the Ant/Ayton duo in the way any longer.

If the youth doesn't improve as much as many hope we might eventually need to pivot again in 5 years or such and do another full rebuild. That makes more sense to me to do short cycles of trying to build than trying to win, then pivot to a new direction after evaluating results.

Blazers also have built a very nice chest of picks over the next 5 years. We have claims on unprotected picks for 5 years of other franchises. That has to be up there for top5 in the NBA.

Some nearly neverending tank fest just doesn't sound like a sustainable way to build talent. Now for a brief few seasons to add a talent - then sure. But it's not some magic guaranteed be all end all of NBA team success.

 

I didn't suggest a neverending tank fest.

Blazers tanking 3-4 years was clearly not enough if they aren't in contention for a championship within 5-ish years.

We won't be.

Once again, I would love to be wrong about this.

*Edit* They just didn't tank hard enough or long enough (and didn't get lucky enough). They now have to count on dumb luck. Which I'm hoping we have in spades.

 

We just had bad luck during that 4 year period. I’m not convinced Amen would have us in contention right now. If the balls had bounced our way we would have Wemby and Flagg. We were one number off in both drafts. That’s the unfortunate reality of the draft these days.

What if we had taken Dyson Daniels instead of Sharpe and Amen instead of Scoot? I don’t think either of them are actually point guards. Our defense would be insane. I still think Sharpe has a higher ceiling than Daniels.

 

96 games in the CBA:

 

I mean I agree that the Blazers should have committed much harder to rebuilding. All the stupid contracts they gave middling vets was pointless.

But by half way through last season that was kind of a sunk cost. We're well past that bridge.

Now the plan should be to win.

I will say that making good NBA roster moves is more like batting in baseball than hitting free throws. You don't need to convert 80%. Baseball 30% is a success. So more like one key player every other year and your doing great.

Deni Camara were great acquisitions. Clingan seems solid.

Will Yang/Scoot/Sharpe be one more?

Yeah the Blazers didn't get the ideal draft haul we might have dreamed of from 4 draft. Yes they didn't use their salary cap well.

But the Dame haul and all related transactions was a masterpiece.

A lot to be optimistic for but also need some other big changes. That's how most the league is. Most the contenders were at a similar spot at one point as well. OKC did much better - but their very unique.

 

And that is expected to happen. The thing is, there are always teams who think they can succeed where we fail with those guys. So even if we were to fail with them we could trade them for good value to round out the roster once we do land the guy(s) we believe to be legit.

Even if you fail five or six times you still have five or six valuable assets that you can trade for more sure things.

It's simply a way to gather good assets. If you make good deals with those assets you can put yourself in position to contend.

 

So like the trade haul Marvin Bagley and Markelle Fultz fetched?

 

Yeah, I don't disagree with any of that. I just don't have much hope that they're going to actually contend with this group. We are now just kind of waiting until they sell the team and the next owner tears this group down and rebuilds again, IMO.

 

More like Sebastian Telfair, ideally... Maybe Grayson Allen for Camara...

 

Grayson was the 21 pick. Telfair 13. I thought you were saying why teams should try to collect high lottery picks.