The Trail Blazers, and the promise and peril of 'pretty good'

Exactly.

 

Try to take into account that accounting has no X factor or mojo and it will make more sense...you're just bummed we dumped the Stampede...we'll find another D league affiliate down the road. I just hope they are based in Eugene where they'll fill an arena with fans

 

Ding! Ding! Ding!

DING!!!

 

I agree. You are saying that Olshey didn't deserve the praise he got last year for a low payroll. It was the timing of when contracts expire that caused last year's low payroll, and this year's high one.

Bring back Bob!

 

Where the hell did I say that? You love putting words in other peoples mouths.

I'm talking about how you act like payroll should correlate exactly to how good the team is.

 

jlprk loves trader Bob...until we fire Olshey, this will continue to be an ongoing theme....jlprk actually doesn't love putting words in people's mouths...he uses words to make people use more words....sort of multiplying responses by design...very effective.

 

Don't you even read what you write?

 

with all the extensive research I do...especially in my kitchen...it's not necessary ....a good actor doesn't need to see his own films after he's made them...unless you're Elvis or Howard Hughes

 

I really don't buy into the whole remarkable health stuff. Yeah, we didn't have any major injuries to our top players, but who in West (that mattered) did outside of MEM (pretty much everyone) and the Clippers (Blake Griffin in the regular season and playoffs and CP3 in the playoffs).

You can't predict injuries, but certain factors played in our favor. We were the youngest team to make the playoffs. Age, in general, plays a factor in the likely hood of injury and also the recovery time. Of course there are exceptions both ways - young players that are injury prone and old geezers like Kareem and Karl Malone that seem to play forever.

Smaller players are also less injury prone that larger players. Again there are exceptions, but in general smaller players suffer less wear and tear on their lower bodies than big men that carry around an additional 50 - 100 lbs. Our top 4 players in terms of minutes played weighed between 195 and 215 lbs.

Perhaps it's just a coincidence, but the two players in our rotation that missed the most games due to injury were our oldest (Gerald Henderson) and our biggest (Meyers Leonard).

None of that changes much this year. Evan Turner replaces Henderson, but is two years younger. Festus Ezeli is now our biggest player, and we all know his injury history. I think most people are only expecting to get about 60 games at about 17 MPG out of him and we have other bigs that can cover for him if necessary.

When it comes to players that actually matter, GSW was even healthier than we were. Their top three players, in terms of scoring, missed a total of 6 games. Those three players accounted for 58% of their scoring. The rest of their scoring was divided between a whole slew of role players. Losing a role player to injury was no big deal for them as they had plenty of other equally talented role players that could pick up the slack.

Our top three scorers missed 10 games and accounted for 54% of our scoring. Our bench wasn't nearly as deep as theirs. So, losing a role player, hurt us more than them.

OKC's top three scorers missed a combined 16 games and accounted for 58% of their scoring. Their bench wasn't as deep as GSW's but they did have a guy coming off the bench that played in all 82 games and averaged 12.7/8.1.

I already mentioned LAC with one significant injury (plus suspension) during the regular season and two during the playoffs.

You can't really judge SAS as the majority of their DNPs were coach's decision (planned rest days). Besides, they won 67 games. It's not like injuries cost them a ton of wins.

In any case, we are still young and our best players are still smaller than league average. We're not relying on a Sam Bowie, Bill Walton or Greg Oden to take us to the promised land. Sure, a freak injury can strike any player at any time, but that's true for every team in the league - more so for those with older rosters (like DAL and MEM).

BNM

 

The Opening Post article lists other injured Western playoff contenders which you missed:

*That paragraph cites another article, with a graph. In the graph, note that the Blazers are in the lower left corner, ranking 2nd- or 3rd-fewest injuries. Your response would be that in the West, most injuries were to minor players, while the graph covers all injuries.

http://instreetclothes.com/2016/06/21/reviewing-injury-totals-2015-16-nba-season/

That's an interesting little factoid.

 

By the way, it was grammatically painful to read. Who not that, Boob. Who not that.

 

You really put your own words into my quote? Wow.

 

Lol, so good.

 

Wes was the straw that broke the camel's back, but we had several other injuries before that. Aldridge missed 11 games, as did Batum. Lopez missed 23 games and Freeland 34. Which fits in nicely with my thesis that older and bigger players are, in general, more likely to suffer injuries, and more likely to take longer to heal than younger, smaller players.

BNM

 

Yeah, but in my thesis, Wes' injury could not have been seen by anyone, making their argument that AA was a bad trade null and void, since he wasnt coming here to be a starter.

I think I'll turn that in to the professor!

 

Personally I wanna see a weekly podcast centered around the Blazers featuring Tunchi and Jlprk. Maybe Canzano could stop in every once and a while and be guest. Would be amazing

 

Oh, I agree completely. No one expected our Iron Man to go down and take the season with him. Yep, Afflalo was brought in to strengthen our weak, low scoring bench. Wesley's injury forced Afflalo to start, which weakened both our bench and our stating line up and totally killed team morale.

BNM