Cleveland? They have improved over last year and it took Boston 7 games last year in the Eastern semis to eliminate them.
I actually like the defense that Portland can put on Westbrook and Durant, in Bayless and Batum. Chris Paul and Deron Williams give Portland fits, but Westbrook isn't in the class of either as a distributor. I think he's a very similar type of player to Bayless and that should be a fun match-up. Durant is pretty amazing of late, but what he lacks is the physical strength to overwhelm Batum.
kristic I believe ... I actually don't even think it's going to be about him dominating the Thunder Frontcourt, I think he's going to have a ton of trouble staying out of foul trouble with Westbrook diving into the lane and taking him out of the equation with 3 or 4 quick fouls. Oden's achilles heel (aside from committing stupid touch fouls) is our guards' inability to cut off dribble penetration ... unless Jerryd can get the job done.
We're about as much as a contender for the NBA championship as the Arizona Cardinals are for going to the Super Bowl or as much as the Phillies are to win the World Series (or the Tampa Bay Rays are to even go to the World Series for that matter). Oh, wait...
Westbrook gets to the foul line like Jerryd, and Durant has turned into a helluva three point shooter, that's two areas at which we suck defensively. I'm not saying they are guaranteed to win, but I won't be surprised if that ends up being a very close game on Friday ... part of it is due to home court advantage.
I think if we actually go to him, Oden should be able to get their big guys in foul trouble rather quickly.
I think we have a damn fine (and fun) team. Very young, very exciting, I really like the addition of the new rookies, they've meshed well with the core group. But they ARE rookies, Oden didn't play at all last year, Batum's season in france ended, I think, before the playoffs (at least his team's participation in the EuroLeague), Bayless is still up and down and Rudy, well Rudy is magnificent, he will probably win both the dunk and 3-point competition one day, but probably not in the same year. But he, also, is still a rookie who doesn't even come close to reaching his full potential. To answer your question - I can't answer your question, the players can. and maybe Nate should ask them dat.
Worse senario . . . Oden doesn't dominate and Durant does. can you imagine the threads the next day . . .
The Jazz win was HUGE. Even if ALL their players were hurt, it was still huge for two reasons: 1) We prevented Utah from winning the tie breaker. 2) Utah pulled 5 losses ahead of us. It didn't matter who was playing the game. We needed the win. Same thing about the Hornets game. Doesn't matter that Paul didn't play the end of the game. It tied the season series for us and pushed into 4th place. At the end of the season, only wins and losses matter. Wins against battered teams count the same as wins against healthy teams. If we LOST that game to Utah, they would've had renewed hope. They would've pulled into 3 losses ahead of us and they would've won the tiebreaker. We would've been playing with fire, ESPECIALLY since they had lots of injuries.
Every team has a "chance" to win the championship at the start of the season, for example. It's generally probabilities that determine whether one is a "legitimate" contender. I agree that Portland would have a chance to win the title. I just think that chance would be to slim too call them a real contender.
Um yeah! Cleveland is a contender every year for the next 8 years at least. They reached the Finals in 2007, they nearly knocked off the Celtics as you said, and they are a better team this year.
I'd say tonight's game gave us a clear answer: no. If the Blazers can't win a moderately tough game on the road, the best they can hope for is a first round elimination.
Please. It's just one game. We beat Orlando in Orlando. At 30-18 and 4th place in the very competitive Western Conference, we are absolutely a contender.
We beat the Magic on the 10th of November. Way to reach. You are only as good as your current play. We are a contender of a playoff spot, but are still out-classed by veteran teams.
