This team is really close to making the jump to a playoff team. Tonight showed that they still have some work ahead of them. Toronto came out from the opening tip with aggressive and confident play. The Blazers tried playing catch-up and made it close, but bottom line they lost this one in the first quarter because they just haven't learned how to consitently bring the heat from the start. They'll get there, but the question is whether it will be this year.
This was a learning game for the young guys for sure. I'm amazed we made it respectable after that first qtr, but these guys don't know the meaning of quit..bounce in their step until the last second. I sure didn't expect them to be where they are this early on. Gotta put 4 qtrs. together...against the top teams you just cannot dig a hole early.
This begins a stretch of games that we will most likely be on the losing end!~ Our easy early schedule gets evened up a bit during this stretch of games. We're not good enough to compete with the better teams.
I hear what your saying, but my pretext was more if we win last night. Does that mean we can go on and handle Houston and the West enough to maintain playoff position. Lookslike the answer is no since we lost bot the game and the playoff spot. Really really tough. The reason I created the poll. If we had go slaughtered last night, I might be second guessing myself, but since we played comeback and made it a game, I think we still have a legit shot at the playoffs. Last night was yet another learning curve of how important it is to land the first punch. I Think we can still make the playoff,s but now Wizard is right. Its all about the Houston games now. I think we can beat Houston with one exception. They hate us with a passion from two years ago and I think still have it out for us. and will be very up for these games, knowing playoff positioning could be in play.
Last night was really just a microcosm of the season. They can compete with good teams but in the end, they have 5 wins against teams with a >.500 all season......FIVE, and all of those are at home. So they are beating the bad teams for the most part (a good thing) but only beat the good teams once in a great while. MEM, LAC, IND, CLE and OKC and now articles have come out that Cleveland basically went on strike against Blatt in the game against Portland. The Blazers are better than many of us thought they were but their SOS ranks 25-29 depending on who you look at and winning streaks need to be put in perspective. https://www.teamrankings.com/nba/ranking/schedule-strength-by-other
Though he doesn't do a lot, Vonleh usually leads his team in rebounding for the time he is in the 1st quarter. He's gaining confidence, is a big, strong body and it looks like they missed that tonight. They got behind early on the boards and it set the tone. If Valanciunas hadn't gone out with 2 early fouls (later changed back to 1) it could have been real ugly very early.
I think if we would have had Vonleh at full strength the 1st quarter might have been much different. Harmless, 2/1/1. I know his minutes are inconsistent and he had a couple of decent defensive plays, but we still need more from the next man up.
I totally get what you're saying, and in a vacuum, I'd agree. However, we have a lot of Debbie Downers on this board, and the logic tends to go like this: If we have a good, but not great record with high SOS: "Our record sucks and I am smart to figure it out and brave to mention this, while the rest of you are homers." If we have a very good record with a low SOS: "Our SOS sucks and I am smart to figure it out and brave to mention this, while the rest of you are homers." As for our current situation, I'm still singing the same tune as I've been: Utah will finish ahead of us. I think we'll finish ahead of Sac. We'll battle valiantly all season long, but ultimately fall short. However, there is still some drama: We could catch Houston. If we lose both games to Houston, it'll be very hard to make the playoffs. OTOH, if we win both games, they could very well go into free fall.
