Also, don't discount that LA gets up for games against Duncan/Spurs, and Dame gets up to play Parker. It's funny though, because LA has been playing all season like he usually does against Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio.
to be fair to them, I think there's a difference. While the expectation that this team at this time will win almost every night is fun, for those who "still" don't believe in the team it seems as if the vast majority are saying "show me in the playoffs". Does it matter to most of us if the team goes 55-27 or 60-22 or 65-17 if they lose in the first round? Conversely, I don't hear many people moaning that the 1977 championship team "only" won 49 games. It actually reminds me a lot of the 2001 Mariners. You never hear people talk about them as the "greatest team of all time", even though no team in history has won more regular-season games than they did. When you lose in the playoffs, you don't get that respect. And it's not as if Portland (again, like those M's) has a track record to build off of and a steady build to greatness (like, say, OKC or the Spurs). Even HOU, with little to nothing remaining since they were last relevant in the McGrady/Yao years, can point to Harden and Howard being big parts of Finals teams very recently. We don't have that--to the outside world, we didn't change any of the Top 4 of a team that won 33 games last year. So it's not necessarily amazing if people don't hop on (or fall off) the bandwagon after this 4-game trip. It'll be fun to watch, but at least for me, I'm going to go with the Winston Wolfe approach--"let's not start sucking each..."
A team like Miami can lose a string of games because they know that once they get to the playoffs they can just turn it on and win the whole thing. Our team back in the late 90's could make that claim too. Our team needs to win as many games as they can because HCA will help immensely in the playoffs, and hopefully we get a favorable matchup in the first round. Right now the bottom three teams are Dallas, Phoenix, and Golden State. We don't play especially well against any one of those three. If I had to choose, I would probably take Phoenix because I hate playing against Dirk in the playoffs. I also think we matchup fairly well with Golden State, but who knows what Curry could do in the playoffs.
I think unfortunately the most likely outcome is us going 0-4. We will be underdogs in every game. The OKC game will be a near automatic loss being the 4th in 5 nights. I hadn't considered this before but that is a great poitn that the Spurs game is the most important because that will give us a 2-0 advantage on the season against them and its very possible we finish the year tied. I'll be happy with any win on this trip. Outside of the 4th game in 5 days loss at Minnesota this Blazer team hasn't lost by more than 4 points since November! If we can be close on the first three games of this trip maybe we can get lucky and win two of them. Going 2-2 would be the most impressive road trip from this team in 5 years. I don't consider a 4-0 east coast trip against terrible teams impressive at all.
Safe travels, HCP! The Alamo is cool to see... I saw it at midnight and there was still 40 people out there taking pictures.
In light of this difficult road trip, here's how the remainder of the season looks Pray for the 4th seed so the Blazers get HCA. It's going to be tough. And look at Indiana. God the east is fucking horrible.
Ugh. OKC game is not automatic loss. We've owned them this year and we almost came all the way back to beat Minnesota which means we had a lot of energy at the end of the game at the end of the trip. We're an awesome road team. Why are people scared of this trip? SA, Dallas, Houston, and OKC should be scared of us!
