Sure making the playoffs gets you experience. I don't really want to speak for MM, because he doesn't need my help, but what I assume he was saying is that he doesn't think especially highly of our chances in the playoffs (if we get there) because of a combination of not enough elite talent and not enough experience, with more weight given to the former than the latter.
So, whether on not you care what I think, what is your rational (or your thinking/logic) behind the Blazers tanking? I can name several reason why that thinking is misguided if not entirely silly. 1) LA won't be happy. LA moves on. 2) Portland would be competing with more teams than I can ever remember for worse record in the NBA 3) Portland has almost no chance to keep their 1st round pic owed to the Bobcats 4) Portland traded away most, if not all, of there 2nd round draft pics You are basically advocating the Blazers perform a fire sale of a Portland team that is as cohesive at it has ever been in the 9 years LA have been on the team, and while rocking a 12-2 record. Your response...
Also, a good deal of Matthews step back threes are not assisted, but I'd still be okay with him chucking those up as it's his signature shot, which he practices a lot, and seems to hit more than wide open shots.
Agree with you. IMO, and I am not trying to force it on anyone else, even with playoff experience, this team is not built the way it needs to be for a playoff run......YET
This is an old argument, but what the hell. Jabbari Parker, Andrew Wiggins and/or Julius Randle look like they have the potential to be franchise altering talents. While Aldridge and Lillard are both very good, neither is really in that tier. Getting one of those players improves your odds of (eventually) capturing a championship in a lot of peoples' mind (I include myself in that camp). The "egalitarian" model (five very good players but no superstars approach) has really only worked once in recent memory and that was the Pistons with Rip, Chauncey, Sheed, Wallace and Prince. The odds of a team winning it all is low even if you get stud because you also need some luck and a lot of health, but take away the superstar and what are your chances if history is any guide?
I personally think LA moves on anyway Being in the lottery gives you a chance at a difference maker The Horncats don't get our pick if we are bottom 12 What do second round draft picks have to do with a difference maker? I have said numerous times that I don't feel the team will sustain this. The Blazers made their bed this summer by keeping LA and adding enough pieces to be good enough to be adequate. They shouldn't have.
repped. This is interesting and i think speaks to the threes as being sustainable over the course of the season. sure, there will be a bad 3pt game here and there, but a stat like that shows me this is fairly repeatable.
IMO, the Blazers aren't bad enough to tank in this 'draft of the century tank-a-thon'. We'd have to jettison some of our best players, just to enter a lottery to try to hopefully to pick a transcendent player, and not fuck it up again. That ship has sailed. We need to develop a winning program and continue to look for opportunities to acquire a player who can get us over the top.
But here's the thing: actually making the playoffs gets you that experience for free, without giving up any member of the team that got you to the playoffs. If we don't make the playoffs, or look really questionable in February, then yeah, let's open up the trade talks. But we're on the up side of the bell curve still; the stats around defense and offense are improving the more we play, not getting worse. You can have some real fool's gold winning, like Crawful's great games coming only in blowouts... wasted stats. But my eye-test shows more resilience than that team had (thank God!)
There are 12 team in just the EAST with .500 or below records. You think this Blazer team is less sustainable than those 12 teams?
I agree that Allen and Olshey have chosen a different course and they're going to have to commit to it for the next several years ... for better or worse. We'll see what happens.
Put the S2 Board into the Way-Back Machine, dial in 2007, replace Wiggins and Randle with Oden and Durant, and then fast forward to today and tell me how many titles either of the teams that drafted those guys have won. I'm not sure how you think you could engineer things to get a top-5 pick in this draft, but say you could, I'll take the odds that Olshey can build around what we presently have and have at least a shot at a Conference Finals vs. 5-6 more years of suckitude as the newbie superstar to be learns how to play in the NBA and then decides Portland's media lights and weather don't suit him.
How does a team that is 10 games over .500 this early in the season get in a position to win the lottery? Why don’t all the fanatics who want to see the Blazers lose give it a break for this season. If you want the team to tank bring it up next summer because there is zero chance of it happening this season. Shut up and enjoy rooting for a team that the biggest market in the US would love to trade rosters with.
I think the number of 3s taken and the clip at which Portland shoots the 3 says a lot more. In relation to the other teams, the percent assisted is fairly ancillary.
They do have a trapdoor in 2016, with all the contracts expiring then, so it's not an all or nothing for several years thing.
