Why not? So you get your fan heart broke...big deal! The highs aren't as high if you don't experience the lows, and the human experience has both.
I can understand people approaching fandom that way, but I don't. For me, sports watching is for relaxation and entertainment, not anything as serious and exhausting as another experience of the human condition. I'll leave that to relationships and personal endeavors. I just want to enjoy watching basketball. So I don't live and die, emotionally, with how my favourite teams do. I'm sure that means I don't get as much out of wins, but that's okay with me. I'm not looking for that out of sports. I'm just looking for constant enjoyment, not big highs and lows.
Great post man! I think the same way! I am hoping for the best always and will always cheer this bad ass team until I die!
Look, I get why people want to look on the bright side, but that isn't the only way to approach things. http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/post/_/id/26162/the-extra-2-and-the-nba Sometimes, you have to admit there is a problem, and be willing to take a step back in order to move forward. As the article explains, Tampa Bay over-came some serious handicaps to build a competitive team. They probably cost themselves a few wins 4-5 years ago, in order to have a play-off team today. Anyone who follows baseball can see the analogy to the Blazers. They are at risk of becoming one of those middle-of-the-pack teams that waste their resources on over-paid and/or injury-prone players, never take a major step forward, and spend their time making excuses instead of meaningful changes.
What I am saying is this: you have a choice to look at this team positively or negatively. Enough bad stuff will happen on its own, so hold off the negativity until then. Embrace these good times because they signal hope. Hope is the gasoline of fandom, it keeps the vehicle moving. Hell, Blake Griffon has even give Clipper fans hope so let's enbrace it whenever we can. Or we can be pissy bitches who claim to follow a team but can't stand any adversity. This is why fair weather fandom is so common.
I think it's perfectly cool to want and hope for certain changes. That's the analytical part of being a fan...trying to understand where the team is and where it can improve. But I think where this goes wrong is that you are not actually the franchise or the front office. None of us are. We can't make those changes. So we can analyze and provide our opinions on what should change...after that, why not just relax and enjoy watching basketball and discussing basketball? I'm not saying that you, specifically, do or don't. I just get a sense that some fans feel it's almost incumbent upon them to not enjoy things to show that they understand that only championships matter. I don't really understand that mentality. I think, as a strategy, a team should do whatever it can to maximize the chances for winning a title (which generally means erring on the side of taking greater risks for greater upside), but I just want to enjoy watching games. Because I'm not the one who can make the decisions. In the Nash/Patterson years, I was pretty harshly critical of the team. Because I thought they made terrible decisions. But I still enjoyed watching the games. You can do both. And, to be honest, the actual records of the team the last few years don't justify "harsh criticism." Some criticism? Sure. They've been far from perfect. But there's been more to enjoy in the watching than not, and much much more to enjoy than during the Nash/Patterson years.
Hmm? I wasn't saying I should make them. I was saying that I'm not in charge, so I'm not going to stress out as if it were my job.
I, along with most others on this board and other board, have fallen into the "super fan/expert" trap of wanting to be right on the internet more than to just enjoy what I am watching. Since I've changed that perspective into me now being content with things that I can't control regarding the team, I find that it is a much more enjoyable experience. Instead of bitching about Miller, I now accept his flaws, but instead of dwelling on them every day, I can now appreciate his strengths. Same goes with Matthews, and while I feel he is largely overrated for the most part, I do appreciate the effort he brings, and now that the roster is more complete, we get to see him play more to his strengths. When the blazers lose, I just don't get upset any more, because there is always another game, or always another season. And so on...
I follow baseball (Go Giants!) and I follow the Blazers, and I honestly do not see the correlation. Baseball has no salary cap and it is also easier to build through the draft. And if you do screw up on a few players you have lots of other draft picks to compensate with. The NBA is star driven. If you screw up on one player it will cost you. And startiing over like Tamba Bay did would takes years. And what happens if the players you got when you started over got MULTIPLE KNEE INJURIES. Then it was all for nothing. This is basketball and one injury is brutal. Gambling on a player is risky. Aside from all of that being negative does not help improve a team. We all know when our team has a problem. Pointing it out over and over and over does not fix it. It just annoys the fuck out of the rest of us. That doesn't mean we should never bring soemthing up that we disagree with, it just means that some fans need to get over themselves and post something interesting instead of sounding like a whinny old bitch. Your post btw was interesting. Good job!
I think that one of the quirkier aspects of this board is this whole issue of optimist vs pessimist, realist vs. homer or however you personally want to characterize the dichotomy. It seems to creep into almost every discussion that we have around here. I just think it's rather odd that some people seem to think that if you're optimistic about the team's future, you're a hopeless homer. I think it's equally strange that if some people strong express reservations about the direction that the team is going, certain people don't consider them to be fans. Although I probably fall more into the first camp than the second, I don't doubt that others who may have a more jaundiced view of the team still want the Blazers to do well. Just a difference in personalities, I suppose. Now, MIXUM gets a whole separate category all to himself and whatever other personnas he has bouncing around in his head.
I went to so many games during the PatterNash years it was ridiculous! You couldn't give the tickets away! I was getting lower level tickets for free at work and I even sat courtside a couple times.
Wow. I wish I had been in Portland and able to take advantage of that...just going to the games is a lot of fun, even if the team isn't great. And there's always something to appreciate...a nice Telfair pass or one of those pure Webster shots that made people overrate his actual shooting ability.
Here's a fundamental contradiction for you: personally, my frustration/anger is born of not being pessimistic enough! If I really believed the team just sucked, then I wouldn't get upset when they get mugged at home by the Hawks and Rockets. OTOH, I couldn't enjoy the victories over Orlando and Miami, because I would see them as just "flukes" that the team didn't earn/deserve. At the end of the Mo/beginning of the Nate era, my loyalty wasn't tested because the team was just plain bad. I could accept that. Now, if I could just convince them to always play with the energy, poise, and teamwork they showed against Miami - my problems would be solved!
Hilariously True. I know exactly what your saying (free work tickets)!, but believe it or not I would roll up to the RG, scalp the ticket's off like a drive through, and go have myself a very nice dinner. Worked pretty well when your club level tickets had the value written right on them, definitely helped with the negotiating. It wasn't until Brandon Roy came along that I chose to never pawn Blazer tickets again!
When you have hope you see clips like this and they make you think 'what can be' instead of 'what could have been': http://youtu.be/pQoeFPmzu-A RIP CITY!
We already did the rebuild stage and loss games in doing so. I just think it's a bit premature to pull the plug or make any to drastic moves yet.
