Reddit thread on what changes the Blazers need to win a title

I was responding to the idea that a small market team like ours has not hope of winning a championship. We clearly did, and not really that long ago. In the past 12 seasons I think we coulda been a contender in probably 5 or 6 of them if just Greg Oden had stayed healthy. If Oden, Roy and Aldridge had all reached their potential and stayed healthy, I think there's an excellent chance that we have a dynasty-level team. (We probably don't get Lillard in such a scenario.)

But this has little to do with our current management team. I wasn't addressing that topic.

 

Especially when you slot in Batum too. Batum never really progressed to max level talent, but he'd have been overqualified as the fourth-best player on the team. A healthy Oden and Roy, plus Aldridge, Batum and Matthews as they panned out, would have been the most talented team in the league.

 

The Warriors, the Durant/Westbrook/Harden Thunder, the Spurs, the LeBron Heat, the Shaq Lakers....I'm probably missing a few, but there aren't many examples of teams even in position to form a dynasty since 2000. We were definitely in that rare pocket.

Heartbreaking to think about, isn't it? It's probably the only chance we had at a dynasty that I'll see in my lifetime. After all, over 21 years fewer than 10 franchises ever had dynasty potential, so 20+ weren't in the running. It's so rare to have the stars align.

Our stars got sucked into a black hole of injuries just as they were starting to align.

On the plus side, the other major "What if?" team of this millennium, the Thunder, suffered wounds that were self-inflicted. It'd probably hurt more to be a fan of the Thunder when you look at what they could have had if they'd just used a little sense.