That's the date of our last win, but it's also the day the team learned that Oden was out for the season. It crushed our hopes. Maybe it crushed the players' hopes as well. Like us, they might've truly believed they could go far with Oden this season. Once he was lost for the season, they just gave up like most of the fans on this board. There's no other way to explain it. We were 4th quarter assassins during our 3-0 start. Now we look like we don't care. I think it's fair to say that the announcment that Oden would be out for the season is a big reason why we've lost these last 6 games. It is our coaches job to get the team mentally ready to play well in those 4th quarters. Every game has been exactly the same. EXACTLY the same. Like Groundhog Day. And Coach is not making any meaningful adjustments to stop it. Changing the starting lineup was basically meaningless because the start to the game is not our problem. I do think Mills has been an improvement over Johnson but still, Nate has to be inspiring these guys with speeches at the start of and during the 4th quarter going. I'm very late to the party, I know, but I think the time has come for a coaching change. It's sad because I think his job would've been safe if Oden was healthy. Blake and Outlaw would still be here if Oden was healthy and they were key parts of our offense that are sorely missing nowadays. Sigh.
It may have been the straw that broke the camel's back. I'm going to say that the state of the current team is irreconcilable. That's devastating to me, because I put so much hope into this iteration of the franchise. It was supposed to do so many things. But how much ridiculous bullshit can get in the way before your heart is broken? I want to look at this team and think, "They're so young, still. Surely something can be done later." It feels like it's over. I stuck with it all last year through all that turmoil, and I believed. Now it's early in the season, and maybe I should wait it out a little longer, but it's different now. It doesn't feel like they're going to recover to be that team I hoped they would become. It not quite like 2005, but my faith in this group isn't there anymore. The way they are applying their skills is not working. They look awful, even when they're in games. There needs to be a new driver, or the driver better see the fault in his direction. I don't think the latter is going to happen.
Oden Coming Back and Everything Being Okay Again had been the carrot driving the team for the last 12 months. The players responded well to "let's gut it out until Oden gets back and then we'll show the world", but that motivator is gone. What's the point if Oden is never coming back? What's the point if Roy will never be the same? The players have indeed lost hope. Now, they're playing like they know they'll be traded eventually.
Maurice Lucas. Then Greg Oden. The one thing I have noticed in life, is that when bad shit tends to happen, it tends to happen in bunches. Mentally the team is in shambles right now. Nate has run out of changes he can make with the Blazer lineups with the current composition of the roster. The only way the team may see some optimism, or possibly something to give them a hope that something has changed and they can possibly win again, is for Cho to change something on the roster to give a glimpse of optimism for the team to feed off of.
I think you're spot on with almost all of your observations and assessments. There's also the elephant in the room from an X's and O's standpoint. I don't think it's a complete coincidence that Roy being reinserted into the starting lineup might be part of the problem. With him dragging that leg around and still dominating the ball, the team's defense has taken a hit and the budding ball movement and running we started to see with the Miller, Matthews, Batum, LMA, Camby starting five, dried up the minute he came back.
I think it was more Roy, with Oden pushing it over the line. Last year, they also lost Oden for the season. And then they lost Przybilla almost immediately after. They pushed through that and still won 50 games...the reason being, in my opinion, because they still viewed this as Roy's team and their star would still be leading the team to success (temporary visits to the disabled list notwithstanding). This year, Roy's entire career was thrown in doubt. Which means the foundation of the team, everything that the offense was built on, was thrown into doubt. Maybe they harboured a hope that Oden could be the savior when he returned...and then had that dashed too, leaving no realistic hopes for the kind of star that drives success. Ah well, it's all pop psychology, but it can be fun to speculate.
