If I'm not mistaken, Blazers were 14-6 with Nurkic last year for a .700 win percentage... 82 x .700 = 57 wins Why is it so unbelievable?
Fringe playoff team? We'v gotten the 8th seed once since Roy was drafted, if you want to say it doesn't feel like we are a home court playoff team that is fine but we fighting for the 8th spot is something we rarely do. Since we made the playoffs with Roy for the first time we have made the playoffs 7 times since, 2 4th seed, 2 6th seed, 2 fifth seed and one 8th seed. 08-09: 54 Wins 4th seed 09-10: 50 wins 6th seed 10-11: 48 wins 6th seed 11-12: 28 wins Lottery, hello Lillard 12-13: 33 wins Lottery, hello CJ 13-14: 54 wins 5th seed 14-15: 51 wins 4th seed 15-16: 44 wins 5th seed 16-17 : 41 wins 8th seed
1. They had an exceptionally easy schedule after acquiring Nurk. 2. The Western Conference is much tougher this year. 3. It's not really that convincing to extrapolate a 20 game sample size to a whole season. A lot of things, internally and externally happen throughout the course of 82 games.
That reminds me of the most epic meltdown this forum as ever seen and that was BlazeX(or whatever his name was) when we took Lillard over Austin Rivers.
Mixed in there were some of the best wins of the season (at red hot Miami, at San Antonio). There were so many close losses to bad teams prior to getting Nurk that's it's not inconceivable that he would have swayed a number of them to our win column.
Pretty amazing that 3 Eastern Conference All Stars are coming West (if Melo comes) and no Western All Stars are going East.
No, 3 have already moved. Millsap, George and Butler. Melo would be 4th. The only one from West who could move East is Hayward. There was outside chance for Jordan moving before Griffin extended. Next year maybe Cousins will consider this.
If the Davis/Cousins experiment continues to fail in NO, I wonder if they'd try and trade DeMarcus for something before the trade deadline.
If they are convinced that he doesn't resign and don't look like making playoffs, you should be able to get him for a good price as proven with George and the same Cousins last year. That said, Cousins deal from last year looks good for Kings now. It has netted them Hield, Fox (they'd have likely lost the pick), Jackson and Giles.
Why does everyone say we had easy schedule at the end yes we had alot home games. But I believe we play the nuggets and the spurs and Utah 2 and Houston. I believe if we didn't have Nurk we had good chance to lose everyone of those games.
It's not unbelievable. It's just that they were SO BAD before he got here and this year the West is a mine field almost every night. Here is that 20-game stretch: L - Utah (88-111) W - Orlando (112-103) L - Toronto (106-112) L - Detroit (113-120) W - OKC (114-109) W - BRK (130-116) W - Okla City (126-121) W - PHI (114-108) L - WAS (124-125) W - Phoenix (110-101) L - New Orleans(77-100) W - San Antonio (110-106) W - Atlanta (113-97) W - Miami (115-104) L - MIL (90-93) W - NYK (110-95) W - MIN (112-100) W - Lakers (97-81) W - DEN (122-113) W - HOU (117-110) Wins against Bad Teams: Orlando, Brooklyn, Philly, Phoenix, Knick, Timberwolves, Lakers Middle Tier Wins: OKC (2x), Atlanta (w/o Millsap), Miami, Denver Wins against Good Teams: San Antonio, Houston Out of the 14 wins, with a team that has Dame/CJ, you should expect to win the 7 games against the scrubs, and 3 of 5 against the Middle Tier where only 2 of those teams (3 games) were Playoff teams....OKC a one-man team and ATL w/o Millsap. The Spurs and Rockets wins were great wins. So with Nurkic they went 14-6 versus maybe 10-10 during one of the easier stretches of the season and one brilliant stretch of play on the road against SAS, ATL and MIA. If you extrapolate that out, that is a 16 game improvement over 80 games so not unbelievable that IF HEALTHY, Nurkic could mean a 20 game difference. The think is, that was an easier stretch and MIN, DEN, OKC (2x) are all much better this season. The West is just going to be a meat grinder this season. For Portland to get 53 wins would be very impressive.
