Although there have been injuries that play a part in this, I think the 1st round sweep of Portland (by New Orleans) really meant jack shit when it comes the 2018-19 Pelicans. And troll....
last year after 32 games they were 16-16. Now they are 15-17. So, only one game off last year's pace. I do think they miss Rondo a lot though
The point was that people made a huge deal out of the Blazers being swept by a team that was "better", yet they're below .500 now. In other words, people overreacted like fucking idiots.
Barring injuries (where anything can happen), you're suggesting that the team is going to finish the year 22-29?
So, you're expecting the Blazers, who are currently at 18-13 ( .581) to go 22-29 (.431) the rest of the way, despite: 1. The fact that they've had the 3rd or 4th toughest strength of schedule to date, depending on which site you visit and it gets easier from here. 2. They're traditionally a second half of the season beast, with Dame generally pushing them to a long winning streak. Congratulations, you're just like most of the national media who are always too eager to write the Blazers off.
that's one perspective....but for damn sure, the Pelicans were the better team last April. There is no doubt about that. And of course being a fan of a 3rd seed team with HCA being swept by a 6th seed...well, it's hard to gauge what an overreaction is to that kind of result and I'd say that for most people here, the lesson about that series wasn't that the Pelicans were so good, it was that Portland was significantly flawed and a much worse playoff team then they are a regular season team. So, if you think the playoffs are a real gauge of a team, then that series gauged Portland as bad
Like I mentioned after that season it was a perfect storm of Pelicans getting hot and executing their game plan compared to the Blazers struggling in the series. With that being said, 3 of the 4 games were anybody's game with about 3 minutes to go and a bounce here or a bounce there could have changed that series but I give Pelicans credit for their performance.
There was 1 game separating the two teams. It wasn't like the Pelicans were the 8th seed beating the #1 seed with 20+ more wins.
maybe...but is that really a positive for Portland? For 3 games to be tight in crunch time, two of them at the Moda, and for Portland to lose all 3 games really doesn't seem to mitigate the damage or modify perception.
Again, you are changing the narrative to how you want to look at it. I never said it was a positive. Just stating a fact.
So are you saying that we got swept by a team that was not better than us? Isn't that even worse? Sounds like we didn't overreact enough.
My thoughts exactly. We got swept by a team that is not very good. Bounces could have went our way to make the series a little more even. However, we were and are a team closer to the group of teams battling for a playoff spot than we are to being a true title contender. We will win a few games we should not but will also lose some we should not. Until we see some incredible breakout with players currently on the roster (Collins?) or a trade (still waiting on the needle to move), results should be the same as we have seen over the past few years.
The 60 game mark can be a better indicator as 2/3 of the season will pass and the final 22 are the bridge point to a playoff berth. Losing 0-4 to the Pelicans is a Coaching dilemma more than anything else.
How about the fact that they had 2 very good perimeter defenders in Holiday and Moore and AD at 5 which nutraulizes Nurks impact defensively? I'm not completely excusing Stotts' coaching or Dame's play, but the amount of people on this board that continue to ignore the huge matchup problems their personnel presented is funny to me.
