The only place our roster got worse is the loss of Ed. Curry is an upgrade over Napier. Stauskas, Baldwin, Trent are an upgrade over Pat. Three point shooting should be markedly better than last year, which is critical in Stotts’ system. I think the amount that the loss of Ed is felt depends on how quickly Collins can expand his game. He definitely has more upside than Ed had. I’m also looking for better years from CJ, Nurk and Harkless. The amount of upgrade other teams in the West got remains to be proven on the court.
I do appreciate your optimism. I would like to think CJ, Nurk and Harkless get better, but I am afraid we have seen what they have to offer. The youngsters are going to take a while, the one that has the most promise is Collins. In my opinion, at this time we only have three guys that would start on a upper tier team, the rest would be bench fillers.
If you were in a race, and you were in 8th, and the 5 people in front of you were hit by a car so you finished 3rd.... would you say you were actually the 3rd fastest person in the race?
The big improvements in the West happened last summer, with many Eastern Conference all stars moving west. Yet, POR still significantly exceeded the projections. We lost Ed. Period. Pat and Shabazz were easily replaced. We added a significant amount of 3-point shooting. Collins still has a long way to go on offense, but he will be better this year that last, and I refuse to believe Nurk has already reached his peak at 23. Yeah, we have some young guys, but the thing about young guys is they tend to get better for several years before they start getting worse. It's going to be a dog fight in the West, like it was last year. POR could finish between 3rd and 10th, but so could every other team that is fighting for those same spots. The "experts" and forum pessimists have been wrong about POR several years in a row. Will this be the year they are finally right? I guess we'll see. BNM
I'd say, accurately, that we were the 3rd fastest to finish the race, and that's what counts. They don't give out medals to the leaders at the halfway or 2/3 way points. You place where you finish, not where you should have or could have finished. I'd also advise against betting your hard earned money on players that are prone to run out in front of moving traffic. One advantage of a young team is fewer games missed due to injuries. Injury prone players don't help you win when they are sitting behind the bench in a suit. You add a 33-year old Paul Millsap to your roster and expect him to perform like he did when he was 30, or even 32, you're setting yourself up to be disappointed. While injuries can happen to anyone, no one should be surprised that guys like Millsap missed time due to injury. Gobert isn't old, but he has missed significant parts of 3 of his 5 seasons in the league. Again, it should not come as a surprise that he missed a significant number of games last year. It's par for the course. These preseason projection assume everyone will be healthy and perform near their career averages. Injuries are unpredictable, but you shouldn't just assume everyone will be healthy for 82 games. To me, it would make sense to weight player projects based on age and past injury history. It's not a perfect formula, but I think it would be more accurate than just assuming equal health for all 30 teams. BNM
It’s funny how the narrative around here is often about how injuries helped the Blazers last season. Our all-NBA starting point guard missed one-ninth of the season last year. Our starting power forward missed 13 games. Our starting small forward only played 59 games. Turner and Harkless were both injured in the playoffs, but nobody seems to mention that fact when pointing out how the Blazers were swept by the Pelicans.
Interesting that Neil gets so much grief, that Pelton really deserves. "Regression to the Mean" apparently means, "Our projections keep fucking up. Maybe they suck. But, what the hell, we've got to produce content, so here what they say this year...."
So, regression to the mean is a catch all excuse for journalists, but for a GM it's just cause to get fired. For a GM, the team needs to keep improving or your head is on the chopping block. I wish journalists were held to the same standard. Canzano would have been gone long ago. BNM
Of course, but it’s rather disingenuous to only mention the opponents’ injuries and use that as a way of disparaging the Blazers’ success.
I suppose that's better than the year you predicted 23 wins. You're the Kevin Pelton of this forum., always underestimating this team. Have you ever predicted the Blazers would win more games than the actually did? I suppose if you always lower your expectations, you'll never be disappointed. BNM
