Which playoff series do you think we had the better roster and should have won but we didn't?

It's talent that wins at almost every level. My 5th grade girls won state just before covid-19 shut everything down. We lost 1 game all season and beat the only team we lost to the following day in the championship game.

It's not because I was the best coach in the state at that level.

Talent wins.

Small market teams don't get enough talent to win in the playoffs. All you can hope for is good chemistry, the best talent possible, and a coach who coaches to the strengths of that talent.

Then you hope to get lucky and catch lightning in a bottle.

 

Sure but he had no touch. Not like Kanter who is pretty gifted around the basket and can make a number of different moves to score. Plums was more of a brute dunker.

 

Part of my issue is if IMO the coaching was better, we wouldn't have had such tough matchups against the Lakers last year or GS in 2017. On top of that, even if some would argue the Pelicans had a better roster, getting swept in that series without making many adjustments was inexcusable along with dropping the big game 1 against GS in the WCF. Both series I believe were winnable even with the talent disadvantage but at the very least shouldn't have been sweeps.

 

I'd say that it's possible the 2014 Blazers/Rockets series saw lesser talent win

 

I've tried to forget that one....thanks a lot

I still remember: that season, Adelman stubbornly insisted on using a platoon rotation> People were railing against it a lot, and finally with around 20 games left, Adelman started staggering starters and backups. The result was Portland won 17 of 20 and went on a 16 game winning streak to close the season. Blazers won the first two playoff series pretty easily.

then, against the Lakers in game 1, Portland built a 12 point lead at the end of the 3rd Q. Adelman pulled out his platoon rotation again, the lakers scored something like the first 15 points of the 4thQ, and held on to win game 1. Blazers never recovered from that coaching miscalculation. That was the year they won 63 game in the regular season, the only time Portland has cracked that barrier. I think they would have won the championship that year, but that disastrous first 6 minutes of the 4th Q sunk them

 

We missed 12 straight shots in the 4th I believe. Offense went south

 

1991 is a weird way to say 2000.

 

Yeah, I'm just kidding, 2000 was really all hindsight--being up 15 a third of the way through the fourth quarter in game 7 (and Brian Grant about to grab a rebound that Shaq eventually ripped away from him...).

 

We’ll beat any team not named the Jazz, Suns, Nuggets or Bucks.

Avoid a series with these teams and we win the Championship

 

WCF against the Warriors without Durant. The Blazers had Hood Collins Curry playing well, with Dame and CJ. Aminu and Harkless were decent. Meyers even played ok as the 10th man. Yes many of the guys had limits, but the back of the warriors rotation was much much weaker.

Stotts should have won that.

I fault Dame as well for not being able to make the quick pass when traps come. CJ did a far superior job in game 5 against the Lakers than Dame has in 5 years.

 

I agree in that Neil is more at fault for the playoffs failures than Stotts.

Problem is I don't know who is going to decide to replace Neil and make an excellent hire. I fear it's more likely we end up with a worse GM than better.

Neil isn't a terrible GM, nor Stotts a terrible coach, which makes it difficult to upgrade those positions.

 

I don't know that it is that 'difficult', maybe, but the fear of that difficulty should not be enough to keep from jettisoning the designers of 9 years of the 'same-old-same-old-rinse-repeat-mid-level-mediority'....assuming this year repeats the pattern

 

Stotts is a terrible head coach
TURRIBLE as Charles would say

for me it’s about how uncompetitive we are once adjustments are made

and unlike others I completely fault Stotts for playoff failures not olshey

playoffs are a reflection of your ability to adjust and ya know, actually coach and make adjustments in real time, not just halftime or between games.

Never once have I felt like Stotts has outcoached the opponent.

 

I haven’t read all you schmucks posts. But easily the Pelicans series. The series we should have lost but got lucky with injuries was the Clippers

 

1991 series against the L*kers. That one STILL kills me.