Game Thread Blazers @ Suns preseason game thread? 2PM start time

Our offense was extremely predictable and therefore easy to gameplan for in a playoff series. Also, Iso/PnR heavy offenses tend to struggle in the playoffs because defenders are allowed to be more physical on-ball.

Short-term pain, long-term gain.

 

It's basically people who dramatically overreacting.

 

It seemed to last year, judging by your chart.

 

I remember myself and everyone else complaining about Mike Dunleavy. He was replaced by more than a decade of really, really terrible coaches. I mean god awful. Dunleavy wasn't great, but jesus he looked sooooo much better in hindsight. Same with Adelman.

Stotts wasn't great and it was time for him to go. But jesus, that show they put on last night was Mo Cheeks-worthy.

 

I would be inclined to say Preseason "Billups and Brooks" worthy.

The B&B show.

 

Agreed, but the biggest issue, in my mind, is that you don't get an even sampling across the playoff teams. Playing against better defenses is one thing, but not getting a round robin look at all of them makes it tough to extrapolate consistent data for ranking purposes.

 

Fair opinion, you're not the only one who has said this, but I haven't seen any data that includes all teams, that supports this over a long period of time. Seems more like a narrative than a fact.

 

Very good point!

 

This is a great chart, it really is. It does a great job of pointing out the Blazers are not as good against playoff teams as they are against the rest of the league. What the chart doesn't identify at all, is the reason for this. You might say scheme, I might say roster makeup, and neither/both could be true.

 

Our offense was ranked #1 in the playoffs last season?

 

We were playing against a pretty bad defense, which probably helped our ranking. But yeah, our starters put up fantastic scoring numbers in those games. Our bench would shit the bed and the lack of defense would catch up to us.

 

It's a different offense, the players would take time to get used to it, also we're playing some real scrubs right now, we aren't deep enough and the bench is weak. I would consider moving CJ to the 2nd unit

 

Also, that stat lacks context. I assume Denver would have ranked #1 for first round games. (Unless someone else topped them in the first round and dropped off more in subsequent rounds.)

 

Which really confuses me, because we were led to believe that it ,”wasn’t the roster”.

 

Give me the “predictable” #2 offense in the league all day every day. The only thing predicable was that we were going to bomb the other team with 3s and you better out score us. That our offense was so powerful, that we could have the worst defense in the league and STILL have a chance to beat you and make the playoffs. I’m cool with that.

 

“All I know is I remember the D was horrible during preseason last year (remember those Denver games?) and the coach and players said the exact same things last year (“work in progress”) yet the team ranked 29th in D.”

This team is headed nowhere

 

I don't say this very often, but there is some merit to what you're saying. We actually did have a really effective offense last year despite all the complaints about Dame and CJ dominating the ball. If we were to roll back the exact same offense this season, I'd be ok with that. Norm offers a valid third option that Dame just hasn't had in years.

The problem was our defense and our bench. It's way, way too easy to game plan against Dame and CJ. We're probably going to run into the same problem this season no matter who is coach.

 

Good points. That is why I got us at 41 wins…..last years bench was better than this years in my opinion. I’ve been getting killed for that opinion, but at least they could score.

 

You're cool with making Dame score 50 points a game to win? I mean it's amazing to watch don't get me wrong. But I'd rather have a warriors style offense predicated on ball movement that gets everyone involved. Furthermore, get others going and their defense will pick up.

 

We had a bench that could score, but inefficiently. And its defense was so bad that they couldn't come close to making it up on offense.

Our bench this year is basically Nassir and Nance instead of Melo and Kanter. And a year older/wiser Ant. It's a minor downgrade in offense, but a lot of those shots will get taken up by our starters anyway. But our bench defense should be significantly improved.

I have a hard time imagining Dame letting this team win just 41 games.