https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2790107-every-nba-teams-blueprint-for-2019-free-agency Portland Trail Blazers Notable Free Agents: Al-Farouq Aminu; Wade Baldwin IV (Early Bird); Seth Curry (non-Bird); Jake Layman (restricted); Nik Stauskas (non-Bird) Options Likely to Be Exercised: Zach Collins (team); Caleb Swanigan (team) Non-Guaranteed Salaries: None Dead Money: Festus Ezeli ($333,333); Andrew Nicholson ($2,844,430); Anderson Varejao ($1,913,345) Salary-Cap Outlook: Womp womp Biggest Flight Risk: Al-Farouq Aminu Realistic Target: Garrett Temple Most Pressing Question: Are Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum both still in town. The Portland Trail Blazers' approach to free agency should be on the simpler side. They won't have money and are thin on trade assets. They should be focusing on their own free agents and searching for inexpensive upgrades on the margins. And maybe they will. But that would mark the third consecutive summer in which they've danced around the luxury tax to keep a non-contender intact. That brand of patience doesn't exist in the NBA—especially if the Blazers aren't coming off a playoff appearance. Consider what the New York Times' Marc Stein wrote while responding to a mailbag question about which Western Conference postseason team will be displaced from the bubble this year: "Portland. Meh offseason. Only made the playoffs three games ahead of the ninth seed. And this season, Dallas, Los Angeles and Denver all should be better. It wouldn't shock me to see some Damian Lillard rumors start flying this season." The future of the backcourt will directly impact how the Blazers tackle 2019 free agency. Trading Lillard or CJ McCollum won't manufacture cap space, but it would signal a potential reset and the lack of urgency to spend that comes with it. If the Blazers remain against breaking up their backcourt band, then next summer will unfold a lot like this one. They'll cross their fingers that Al-Farouq Aminu won't cost a small ransom, rummage through bargain bins and hope their Groundhog's Day trajectory doesn't invite trade requests from Lillard or McCollum.
Seriously? A 24-win team "should be better". Well yeah, it would be hard for them to be worse. That doesn't mean they are primed to displace a 49-win playoff team. BNM
If they're not going to be better than US, how do they relate to US? Sounds like he was saying should be better than us...
Yeah, that was my point. Who gives a shit if 24-win DAL is better. They aren't making up 25 games on us. BNM
This shit is driving me crazy. I try to stay away from the board but I'm bored. Who gives a FUCK if we had a "Meh" offseason?? We STILL have the TEAM that won FORTY NINE GAMES! Same starting 5! We have a First Team All NBA Player. Why would he let us drop out of the playoffs? Dallas and Lakers will be better but not better than us. As for Denver, they have to prove it. We've proved ourselves every year. They haven't. And no, we won't be fucking trading Damian Lillard. Jesus Christ.
And by the way, they're overlooking Memphis. They will be the most improved team out West this year. No threat to Portland though. Also- Yes we were three games ahead of 9th but it was still THREE GAMES AHEAD. Furthermore, we went on a long losing skids at the end of the season to FALL to THREE GAMES AHEAD. We were NEVER in danger of missing the playoffs like every other team was.
We went on a 13 game winning streak just to be only 3 games ahead. Is that not more of an abboration than losing a couple games? What's your point? If you can use the fact that we lost a few games down the stretch as an excuse to be positive for us, why don't you use bad injury luck as an excuse to be positive for other teams? Oh, sorry, I thought we were trying to be objective.
We played 16 games decided by 3 points or less, we won 8 lost 8 which is what teams avg for games decided by 3. We had the 10th best point differential, we allowed the fith fewest points in the league and were 8th in DEF rating, we were also only 1 game ahead of BBall references win prediction of 48 win due to our stats (https://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/POR/2018.html). I don't look at anything we did and say it was unsustainable or a fluke. We had a great def the entire year, we had a decent offense the entire year and we are bringing back almost every important piece of last years team. Unfourantly at this point int he summer when people are looking to pick apart teams they will take a look at the Blazer and say "hey they didn't do anything this off season so that means there is nothing to talk about and since they didn't improve their starters that means they have to regress". Talk like this is what the Raptors endured the last few years and that didn't stop that team from constantly improving. Since what we need to improve is simply some players getting better and its all an internal thing and not something you can easily gauge analysts will continue to rip us apart and say we will get worse until the season starts.
We were more than 3 games ahead after the 13 game win streak. We were 3 or 4 losses ahead of the 4th seed.
"Dead Money: Festus Ezeli ($333,333); Andrew Nicholson ($2,844,430); Anderson Varejao ($1,913,345)" There couldn't be a more appropriate phrase for these busts.
