Hit by injuries or lose their stars for the season? SA, Dallas, Memphis, Minnesota, Chicago, Orlando, OKC, Utah, Miami....if any of these teams (and more) lost their best player they would drop quickly ...let alone multiple players. And history tells us it will happen.
Unless they lose their stars very, very early in the season … most of those teams will probably have 80% of the wins needed to be better than us by midseason
I wasn’t aware that the Blazers were trying to win their preseason games. Looked to me like Chauncey was trying different lineups and seeing which guys were keepers.
When you down grade at coach and trade away your only All Star that's the choice you're making. Now, just gotta hope for stability and vision from management and ownership.
In order Playoffs: Nuggets Suns Lakers Thunder Warriors Kings Playin: Pelicans Wolves Clippers Mavericks Lottery: Blazers Jazz Grizzlies Rockets Spurs
That is a pretty good list. I will be interested to see what happens to the Clippers and Pelicans. If healthy they could definitely move up. Not sure about the Mavs "chemistry" quite yet. They could easily slip......again
Partly due to lack of talent, partly due to injuries, but in the final analysis, due to intent to lose in order to gain high draft picks. The Blazers will likely be getting another prime lotto pick this year, but at some point there’s going to be a switch to intending to win. That’s the point when Billups will have to prove if he has the right stuff to be the coach for the Blazers’ future.
Intent to lose after the season had already failed and our defense hadn't improved and our offense had gotten worse. I'll be as happy as anyone if Chauncey starts getting results. But I'm done with this experiment. We need to be looking at bringing in the next up and coming coaching staff.
You're certainly welcome to that opinion and can point to a lot of things to back it up. I don't think anyone expected that Chauncey was fully ready for a head coaching job when he was hired. I think that Cronin and Blazers' ownership put a lot of stock in the value of his name and reputation when they hired him and felt that he would grow into the job. Obviously, the team he has now is nothing like the one that he signed on to coach. I'm giving him this year to show that he can put his stamp on a very young team and show that he's matured as a coach. If not...NEXT.
ESPN had Henderson rated higher than Westbrook. Not that he needs a legit reason to be motivated for this matchup, but I can see Russ taking this personal.
