Lock me up, I don’t think it’s all that bad.

Yup. There should be a separate "positive poster/homer" game thread. I'm done dealing with people that predict the next 2, 4, 6 games as losses, when we haven't even played one minute of the current one. I don't allow people like that to be involved in my day to day life, so why would I do it here....

 

While it might not be the case a couple years from now.
For this team in 2019-2020.
Seth > Simons on both ends of the floor, in all aspects of the game.

 

After a couple good shooting nights Ant stopped passing the ball...shows his youth. Now he's shooting as soon as he gets up the court

 

This is false, both his assists per game and AST% have gone up slightly in the last week or so. I'm not saying he's a good passer or anything but he definitely hasn't stopped passing the ball any less than he was.

 

Watching games I saw him bring the ball up and shoot without passing once many, many times and come up empty....if his assists have gone up, they must have really sucked before...Kenny and Chuck called him out on it after back to back bricked jumpers with no passes...the difference to me is he was making those shots earlier in the season....it became glaring to me when he was bricking them.
We have way too many empty possessions with no passing to win this way..he's young and I'm sure he'll improve that aspect of his game but passing isn't his strength now in my view

 

I agree with you that he needs to be a better passer, especially if he's running the 2nd unit.

But to say after he had a few games where he got hot that he stopped passing is just not correct.

 

I think he's gone way more ISO in our recent losses so we just disagree....I'm just relying on my memory of watching him play....and he's not alone...we have a lot of players going into ISO mode which isn't tiring out the opposing defense and is getting them transition buckets by the boatload.
Last game I saw one play with 4 passes that ended with an easy Melo layup....we need much more of that..teams don't have to work on defense against our ISO tendencies

 

My issue with his offense is less of passing the ball and more of taking a good shot.
Too often this year I've watched him make a poor decision trying to get all the way to the rim out of the P&R when the defense is on it's heels.
He's a knockdown shooter. Stop and take the 10-15 footer instead of try that one footed hook/runner he attempts. As it just allows the defense to get a strong contest.

To me shots like that are just as bad as ball stopping and ruining the flow of the offense that Swanigan got benched for last year before he was moved.
He needs to make better decisions out of the P&R.
I have no hope for his defense this year. It is what it is. He's 20, he'll get better on that end with more experience and more muscle.

 

You know what the really annoying thing is?

We could have just beaten the G-League teams in CLE/NO/GS and we would be at .500 with a really easy stretch of games coming right now.

 

but even good teams will boot away a few games every year to teams they should have beat. Almost inevitable in an 82 game schedule. I'd agree though that Portland may be already approaching the quota for blown games for the year

the way to make up for that is to beat some good teams. Blazers have only done that once, against the Mavs, and Dallas is playing a lot better now than they were in the 3rd game of the year. Portland has played 18 games and only 8 have been against teams with winning records. Portland is 1-7 in those games. They have to get better

 

If there's a new seeding system with tournaments for the playoffs...we should have Nurk by then....this would actually benefit any team with double digit losses that plays really well after the break

 

The win against Chicago has given me a glimmer of hope. I loved all the cheering from the bench for Carmelo. These guys seem to get along very well, and to genuinely like each other. That tells me they may stick together and figure this out.

 

Through Nov. 30 last year, Seth Curry had ONE double-figure scoring performance. He didn't reach double digits for a second time until Game 23. He was averaging 4.3 ppg at that point.

He also had a whopping 20 assists, three steals and gotten to the line FIVE times. He was scorching the nets to the tune of 35-for-91.

Compare Ant to Seth this year and their stats are nearly identical. Ant actually has a higher PER and scoring average and only plays a couple more minutes per game ... while he's part of an NBA rotation for the first time at the age of 20.

I think we need to be careful that we aren't trying to judge Simons at his worst against memories of Seth Curry at his best. He's already near Curry levels in a lot of ways and it's reasonable to expect he'll improve in the areas he's not over the next few months as he matures and his teammates gel ... just as it was with Seth.

 

What if Blazers get 6th seed (46-48 wins) and, with a healthy team, win the championship. Man, that would be absolutely best case.

 

I'm more optimistic than I was based on how Skal is playing. Our off-season moves + injuries left us with only four good players (Dame, CJ, Hood, WS) and then a huge drop off after that. Now that Skal looks like he may be or become an average+ player, we are one step closer to restoring our lost depth.

Nurk, Zach, Hood, CJ, Dame --> That's a solid starting lineup with two near-elite players, good interior defense, and firepower on offense.
WS, Skal --> Assuming Skal keeps it up, that's 7 average+ players, but still not deep enough.
Little, Ant --> We need these two to pan out while Dame is still in his prime. That would give us 9 average+ players.
??? --> Be nice to have one more.

There are about 150 average+ players in the NBA which is only 5 per team. If you can go 9-10 deep you are way ahead of the game.