Game Thread Game #3:TRAIL BLAZERS @ LOS ANGELES CLIPPERS OCTOBER 25, 2021 - MONDAY, 7:30 PM, ROOT SPORTS, NBATV

That's certainly a theory. We saw many of the same team/roster issues last night that we saw in 5 of the previous 6 games this season, so I'm not ready to point to one person.

 

Care to make a friendly wager on our playoff success this year now that we've got rid of the one thing holding us back in your opinion? Seems like a WCF appearance should be a near lock, right?

 

I may have worded my point poorly.

I meant to say that a lot of people were happy about how much better Stotts was in his first year or two compared to Nate (who was too rigid according to some). That eventually gave way over time when people wanted to look for a reason why our team wasn't talent enough to contend. This same trend has basically repeated itself for 20 years. People want to believe their teams players are better than they are and that a small coaching change/bench addition will vault them into contending status.

 

It was 9-0 or 10-0 stat NBATV showed during the game... But maybe that includes his last few regular season games in OKC vs Portland. Although those couple were before Dame broke that team!

 

We didn't see any growth in Dame or CJ game the last few years under Stotts. Which is very normal, people often need a new voice to have a significant change of their approach and improve.

Chauncy is very articulate, intelligent, observant, and detailed with his responses to coaching questions; I haven't seen that in a Blazers head coach before, so that is a big part of why I and I'd assume others have high hopes. He also just has an "IT" factor of a leader that you can see right away in every action he takes, similar to Dame.

But who knows, maybe Chauncy won't get anything better out of DameCJ or maybe they will be worse. It was obvious we were not going to see a large improvement of DameCJ with another year of Stotts so its worth seeing what a change looks like. Especially if we trade one of DameCJ; I will want to have known we gave them chances with two coaches. If we traded one of DameCJ last summer and they had a dominant Finals MVP season for another franchise I'd always regret not seeing what could've been in Portland.