Yes, we lost Roy and Oden--but we now have Kurt Thomas, Jamaal Crawford, Raymond Felton, and a very promising Elliot Williams, who is having a great camp. Will the addition of Thomas in the frontcourt, and Felton, Crawford and Elliot in the backcourt, help us overcome the loss of Roy and have a winning season? I really don't know, but I'm starting to wonder if these small moves by the Blazers are actually going to be very effective at shoring up our weaknesses.
This may very well be the season to have a lot of very good players, rather that a few exceptional ones. With the back to back, three in a row games all played in a shortened season, endueance is going to be the key. A couple of reletivly fresh good players may have the advantage over a burned out "starr"
The team will play better without Roy. Portland has a chance to be good if Nate let's the reigns go a bit. Not title good, but good enough to make a lot of fans happy.
I also think Nolan Smith is going to be a very solid back up PG. We are gonna finish 4th in the West! Great thread Shooter... and even better avatar! WOWzers!
I am still trying to figure out if we actually lost Oden this year. If he was going hard on the bike for an hour yesterday like Rice was saying in the video interview, how long could the "set back " be. I bet he is back in February.
Crawford (If I remember correctly) said that he was told he would be a backup in PDX and was fine with that.
True. But I think Nate will quickly discover that he'll help us more in the starting lineup and playing starter minutes.
Look at our center position . . . Camby, Chris Johnson, and Kurt Thomas--none of them will scare you, but the 3 of them working together could provide a very deep and respectable strength for us. I think Chris Johnson could even be a surprise this year.
Over Matthews? Nah I think Nate wants some vetran leadership off the bench. Also, I think a vetran will be more accepting of coming off the bench. I really like Batum and Crawford being the guys coming off, than Batum and Matthews, IMO.
Probably a very good chance to get it again, now that Odom will probably start and Terry may as well.
I'm very excited for the year, getting Crawford and Felton will be huge additions. Thomas is a nice veteran backup for a few minutes off the bench. We are losing Andre Miller, and while I was in favor of the trade I still don't think people appreciate how much he contributed to our wins last season. Over the course of the season he was our second best player. He got so many easy lobs to LaMarcus, Nic, Wes. We were leading the league in alley-oops and that was solely from Miller's excellent play. Miller was posting up smaller guards when we had the mismatch. Now Miller lack of outside shooting really hurt us in the playoffs but we could lose a number of games this season that went our way with Miller running a very effective offense last year. Roy hurt the team last season so he'll sadly be addition by subtraction. Oden didn't play at all so even if he plays 10 games in March that will be more production. I believe bench scoring will be much more important this season then a normal season; with Crawford and Batum we have one of the best scoring bench pairs in the league. That will win us extra games. I'm very excited for this season, maybe I'm just a blind homer optimist at the moment but I really like the direction of this team and the flexibility it will have in the offseason.
