This is a very simple equation, we have an owner that thinks he knows hoops and overvalues mediocre talent, and undervalues people who know talents opinions. He surrounds himself with yes men and the result is what you see today!
I was just talking about the last 10 years with Allen running this team. I doubt PA's had a Phil Jackson zen moment ,and will scrap his I know everything ways......
Agreed, but maybe that is why I hate rebuilding when it comes to the Blazers, about 4 years of season tickets where I often didn't care if I went to games and couldn't even give the tickets away. Are we about to go through that again. Honestly who watched the Blazers religiously last half of last season?
I'm all for rebuilding. The team was very, very close with Oden and Roy and Aldridge (and Batum, and Bayless, and Rudy, et al). It didn't work out, but we had a couple of years of upward momentum, and if knees had held up, we'd be threatening to win titles by now. I think Cho wanted to rebuild, and that was one of the reasons that he was let go. There may have been personality issues, too, but he knew we were more than one piece away, and I don't think that he would have thrown money and Camby and Crawford and given up value to get Felton and Smith. With that being said, if we had started the rebuild a year earlier, we might not have been able to flip Wallace as well as we did. Finally: I'm not a season ticket holder, so it's easier for me to support another rebuild. I don't know how so many of you keep spending so much money on Blazers tickets, but bless you for doing so Ed O.
It's easy to support the concept of a rebuild, but I have yet to hear somebody put forth a reasonable plan as to how that can be achieved with any reasonable expectation of building a contender within a few years. The way I see it, with Aldridge, Wes, the rookies and rest of the squad, the Blazers will be in that worst of all places that the T'Wolves know so well: not good enough to make the playoffs and not bad enough to get a franchise player. The hopes of becoming a contender would seem to hinge on some future hypothetical Chis Paul-like trade. Personally, I'd rather add some decent cheap vets, make the bottom tier of the playoffs, and hope to luck into a deal like that instead of dwelling in lotteryville for years.
When the Blazers have hope to sell I buy. For me that meant when there were young players on the roster who I was curious about (even going all the way back to the halcyon days of Z-bo, Telfair and Miles) I pay attention because even if the wins are in short supply I like watching players develop ... or seeing if they can develop. Now did I follow every game in March and April? No, absolutely not, but I (and maybe others?) needed a break from watching Crawful and Feltank drive the bitch right into the turf in pursuit of their numbers. The only time I cared to pay attention was when all of the youngins like Babbitt, Smith and the trade acquisitions got a lot of burn.
I agree. I found last season painful from the get-go. After losing Oden and Roy, the team was destined to be mediocre if everything went well (although they had me fooled for about 90 seconds at one point early in the year). The draft and trades were poorly managed and the coaching was same-old, same-old. If there's a new team with a possibly good young core, I'll be a lot more interested than I was last year. I don't think that Lillard and Leonard are a bad start, but the team still isn't very good and I believe that years of bad drafts have gutted the chances of the team evolving into a HCA-level team. Adding a young stud center like Hibbert might have changed things, but having that fall through and then matching Batum for over $11m/year is not going to get this team to a good enough place for me to be very excited about it. Ed O.
Like I said, unless you have the top 3 picks and one is a projected future franchise player, there is no "building through the draft" bullshit. a large expiring contract is often better than having a lottery pick.
In what way was this team even remotely close to doing anything special? I must have watched a completely different team that season.
