History would say there is no chance. Considering he just got extended, that would be unheard of. Do you think he would get fired if we got swept?
Just can the Epitome of Mediocrity and be done with it. We have around the 5th-best talent in the league, but we get 2 more years of this oaf. The Blazers have historically had excellent talent and an ordinary coach.
What did he do to deserve it? He is a 50% coach with horrible record in the playoffs. Shows Portland fans are happy with mediocrity. We have more talent then Dallas and he is being out coached again. Same thing happens every year. His offensive sets are horrendous. We are being killed on the pick and roll on defense. Not hate just facts. You are what your record shows. 10+ years and 1 series victory in the playoffs, 50 % in the regular season.
I'm going to wait until we get a home game to jump off the cliff. But in games like yesterday, when LMA's already not making some normal shots due to fatigue, isn't an easy coaching decision to say "Nic's getting torched by Dirk, so I'll have LMA take the hardest challenge on both ends of the floor for the entire 4th quarter". He tried Nic, he tried Crash, he tried doubles...hence Peja looking like he stepped out of Hot Tub Time Machine looking for Chris Webber and Mike Bibby.
I'd be curious which teams you think are more talented than Portland. Miami, Boston, Orlando, Chicago, OKC, Lakers, Mavs, and Spurs all come to mind. I think they're in the category of Atlanta, Denver, Memphis, New York. So that would put them 9th-14th in my book.
Skimming just starters-- http://espn.go.com/nba/depth better than us-- Boston Miami New York San Antonio equal-- Orlando close behind us-- Atlanta Dallas Oklahoma City
The one silver lining in all of this is that my opinions annoy you so much. It's actually pretty hilarious.
There is your first problem. Our starters outscored Dallas' starters last night, so bench play matters.
Very true. I would add that the complaints about the Blazer defense are over-stated. Their defense against a good team has been good enough to win.
Duh. You wanted me to go through all NBA rosters to compare to ours. To save time, I used a site that puts all starters on one page. If you know of a page listing all starters and subs, please give it, so I can better meet your demand to compare other teams to ours, in order to meet with your approval. Apparently your criticism is that had I also considered subs, I would have lowered my roster rating from 5th-best. So you're saying that our bench is worse than average. Our bench includes Batum, Rudy, and Roy. Batum is a starter on most teams and the other 2 are average for subs. So even had I considered subs, I don't think it would change my rating downward, and even if so, certainly not as many spots as you want.
Yes, I think our bench is worse than average. Compare them to Dallas this series. Not that stats tell the entire story, but this site has our bench rated 26th out of 30 teams. I would guess we're probably closer to 20, but still certainly not good. Bench Rating
You ranked Deff, which is defensive efficiency, which is a team's efficiency minus its opponent's efficiency. Dallas plays faster than us, on average. So in its average game, Dallas and its opponent score more stats than we and our opponent do. So average of (Dallas minus its opponent) > average of (Portland minus its opponent). So they rank higher than us simply because they play faster. (Heh heh. I know that's not the whole story, but you picked my favorite site Hoopstats, and I know the weaknesses of the efficiency stat. Let's see ya squirm out of this one.)
Well outside of FT% they ranked in the bottom half of all other statistical categories. They ranked bottom 10 in 16 out of the 18 categories and bottom 3 in over half of them. All of those things seem to match up with what I've seen; we have a thin bench, full of inconsistent players, and almost no size. I recall two years ago, almost every national televised game the announcers talked about our depth. This year, the only time Portland Trail Blazers and depth is brought up, its about our lack of depth. I'm not sure there is a team in the league that has a worse collection of big guys and/or PGs coming off the bench.
