I suppose it all depends on how you define "solid core". There is a very big difference between present and future. Right now, our core (starters and top 2 or 3 bench players) is slightly better than average. Marcus Camby is still a servicable center, TODAY, but he's not a piece to build around in the future. He's not going to win an NBA title in Portland, but if he were traded to Miami, he would be a very valuable piece for a championship contender. He is a solid starting center. I get the feeling around here that most posters are taking the "fuck the present, tear it down and build for the future" attitude. While I always think it's good to plan ahead, I personally want to see the team we currently have win as many games as possible - always. I hate an attitude that accepts failure. If you're going to play, you should play to win, TODAY. You should always try to put the best possible team on the court at all times. Tanking is for losers. It's a defeatist attititude that fosters a losing mentality. You want young players, the Batums and Elliot Williams to learn what it takes to win, not just accept losing as a natural consequence of being young and inexperienced. That's what they can learn from veterans like Camby, Przybilla, Thomas, etc. Plus, those older, more experienced veterans can become valuable trading chips, as either expiring contracts or as valuable players to an Eastern Conference team looking for the final piece to make them a championship contender. So, I'm always in favor of any trade or signing that imroves our current chances to win, without giving up a valuable future piece (Batum, EW, etc.). If it comes down to keeping a D League reject on the roster, or signing a veteran like Joel, I'll take the veteran every time. He will contribute more on the court, and teach the youngsters some valuable skills (like how to set a pick). So yes, we have a solid CURRENT core and a few pieces to build around for the future. I don't want to tank and I don't want to be a team that spends six years in the lottery HOPING to land one of the few players who will actually make a difference. The Tim Duncans, Shaqs, LeBrons, etc. are few and far between. I'd MUCH rather be the 8th playoff seed and be locked into the 14th pick than be the 9th seed with a 99.5% chance of getting the 13th pick. All players and all teams go through a huge adjustment when it comes to the pressure of the post season. Best for guys like Aldridge, Batum etc. to get as much playoff experience as possible, as soon as possible. They will learn more from getting swept in the first round than they will sitting on the couch watching the lottery. That said, Larry Miller is a moron. Hire a fucking GM already. How can the organization possibly have a vision, direction or plan without someone in charge of building our current and future roster? Who th efuck is steering this ship? Right now, nobody and that's just plain stupid and a total failure on the part of Larry Miller. BNM
You do realize what you say is equivalent to turning a barge not a speedboat? What GM wants to work for Paul Allen, I wouldn't. What better coach is available and wants to coach for Portland? None. Go ahead and make all the changes you want but be careful what you ask for. Nothing wrong with an apologist. There is something wrong with knee-jerk reactionary actions and not knowing what the possible outcomes are.
One that wants to be grossly overpaid, and will continue to be paid for another two years after he's fired for making the goofball, eccentric owner "uncomfortable". Doesn't sound like that bad of a gig to me. Based on what? How exactly has the current coach been mistreated by the owner? Nate's now in his 7th season in Portland. He has won a total of six playoff games and hasn't won a single playoff series. If you ask me, he's been treated more than fairly by the owner. Mr. Sonic has coached longer in Portland, with lesser results, than in Seattle. This is now the fourth season in a row with declining results (yeah, I know, injuries...). Why wouldn't another coach want to come here and be rewarded with a seven year commitment for basically mediocre results? BNM
Good post and I agree with most of it. I suspect that Larry Miller is far from a moron, knows that the team needs a GM and is waiting for PA to tell him to do something about it. Who knows, they may even have their man selected, but have to wait for the season to end before then can make it official.
Exactly. I don't have a problem with people thinking that it's time for a total rebuild, that we need a new owner, GM & coach, or whatever the case may be. The purpose of this board is discussion about the Blazers. If you have an ax to grind or an position you want to express, do it. What gets really old is the constant one-liners saying essentially the same thing over and over again and implying some significant level of superiority over us poor mortals who might hold a differing opinion.
Given that the team is just 2 games over .500, you'd have to be pretty much a dumbass not to know that the team is pretty mediocre right now. That's not the issue. The issue is what to do about it. Some significant changes are going to have to be made, but I'm not in favor of just tanking this season. Unless there's a fire sale of a deal to be made at the deadline, I'm fine with waiting until the off-season and the hiring of a new GM.
And I am not fine with that. What seems to be the case, IMO anyway, is that we keep waiting. Give it one more year, no knee jerk reactions. Well how many years of mediocrity do we need to have to realize we need to make major changes? In the article, Larry Miller says this If that quote doesn't disappoint you as a Blazer fan, then I don't know what would. This team needs an infusion of young talent, with the hopes that we strike it rich like we did with Brandon or LA. Since Portland isn't a hot destination for elite level free agents, you either have to trade for one or draft one. Keeping average players on the roster is a great way to make the playoffs every year and nothing else. If that's what the franchise and it's fans want then that is sad to me
I think, though, that you are using an idealized and romanticized model of "rebuilding" (one that many fans hold), rather than practical realities. Many fans get into this "min-maxing" idea of either you should be championship-caliber or else terrible so that you can hoard cap space and top draft picks to acquire the superstars who will make you championship-caliber. It sounds somewhat reasonable on the face of it (if you are fine with having plenty of seasons that are thoroughly unfun to watch--remember, this is supposed to be an entertainment), however the problem is that (at least to my perception) that strategy isn't borne out in reality. Now, I haven't seen or done a rigorous study on this...this is just my perception from what I've observed. But the teams that bottom out tend to be bad for long, long periods of time. Sometimes they do eventually get lucky (Cleveland finally getting LeBron James after like 15 years of being a doormat) and sometimes they do not (the Warriors, outside of one stunning year where they upset the top-seeded Mavericks, have been irrelevant for most of my life). You don't see this vibrant "cycle of life" where teams get bad, recruit and/or draft superstars and are back in the champion mix. Instead, the teams that win seem like they improve progressively and you can rarely trace a meteoric rise from crap to champion. Generally, they were average for a while, then made the jump to good and then to great. Average being a necessary way-station and being much closer to a championship than a team that's torn down. As I said in another post, if the team were to put a solid point guard and a serviceable center around Batum/Wallace/Aldridge, they'd have a pretty good team. One that could win a playoff round and maybe two if things went their way. If they could find or develop a star point guard or center, they'd be a title contender. Yes, that's hard...but that's where about a third of the league is. And, from what I can tell, that's not as hard as breaking it down and building it up from a bad team. So all of that is to say this: I don't think the quote you highlighted is sad or disappointing. I think it makes sense based on what I've seen of the NBA history in my watching lifetime. That's not to say that I think the franchise is running at peak efficiency. I think there's something definitely wrong in the management, as the firing of Pritchard, hiring of Cho, near-immediate firing of Cho and then no GM for a year seems quite dysfunctional. But the philosophy encapsulated in just that quote, while it might seem infuriatingly "calm waters, all is well," I think is basically right. The team is mediocre to slightly above mediocre but isn't that far from being legitimately good. And it is within that bolt of luck, that pretty much every title team has needed, to becoming a championship-contender.
I think this is the case with certain teams. Big market teams that can attract players. Portland, OKC, and others need to do it through the draft, IMO. As for fun to watch, is this fun to watch? Knowing your team can't win a title, but not willing to do what it takes to try to win? Adding average players as band aids? I know I am in the extreme minority, but that's how I feel.
I know for a fact, because I read some their posts, that prior to last season Mavs fans felt their team wasn't ever going to be able to do more than win a round or two in the playoffs. Too many mid-level players and only one superstar in a league that was trending towards a 3 superstar model. We know how that turned out. The Heat fans, who expected their team to be anointed, ultimately went home unhappy while Mavs fans felt like they somehow found the winning lottery ticket in the bottom of their sock drawer. The point being, of course, that sometimes it doesn't take much for a team to gel into something greater than the sum of its parts and accomplish the unexpected. Sure, the Blazers don't have the talent right now that the Mavs did, but the point is that they wouldn't need a total rebuild as much as for Nic to step up to another level and maybe a change out of a couple of mid-level players. One other point, the Clippers lived in lottery land for seemingly endless years and had a ton of talent pass through their doors, but it wasn't until they figured out how to make a trade that they've started to become relevant.
Yeah, but Golden State and Cleveland aren't considered "big markets" (Golden State, while theoretically the team of the Bay Area, is really more akin to the A's in terms of being marginalized) and they haven't really managed to be good much, despite constant high picks (and regardless of GM, they've gone through many). You need the stroke of luck, but you generally need the average or better team that the stroke of luck elevates. Again, I think you're off-base about "what it takes to try to win" so I disagree that they're "not willing" to try to win. As for whether this team is fun, obviously there are levels of fun. This is far more entertaining than a team that would win single-digit games, where every game is pretty certainly a loss and probably a bad one. Is it worth not having the entertainment of Blazers basketball for five years running in the hope of having the fun of a championship contender for a few years per, say, twenty years (outside of a few franchises, a few championship-caliber years per couple of decades would be a pretty good success rate). I can't answer for you, but certainly not for me. I want the team to work hard to become title-caliber, but I think it's losing the plot a bit to actually want to not even have a team worth watching in order to chase that (especially when I think that's a bad way to chase it in any case).
I'd rather try and follow the route where we are a mediocre playoff team for years then get one lucky player to become title contenders. I don't want a Florida Marlins championship where we suck for ever then cash in a bunch of prospects and free agents for a single season of success only to have to tear it competely down a few months later. It's going to be extremely hard to win a championship no matter how you slice it. It'll be hard to win a championship by tanking. It'll be hard to win a championship by slow incremental improvements. It'll be hard to win a championship by dumping most guys on the roster for cap space to bring in elite free agents. Whatever road this team takes to competing is going to be enourmously difficult and most likely NOT going to result in a title. I'd like to see us take the route that has the most fun in the meantime, and I'm sure the owners of the Blazers want the same, as they have enormous payroll and operating expenses that require huge amounts of revenue to break even. If the team is tanking for the better part of a decade they could lose $100 million. Remember how empty the Rose Garden was in the 21 win season when we were getting killed at home by 20 every night? 10 years of that and you could be talking about the team eventually moving to a more profitable city. A doomsday scenario such as that is the more likely outcome of multiple seasons of intentional tanking than tanking leading to a title.
