Come on ping pong balls! No shame in taking a little break from caring about the team. I've done it while we were stuck in purgatory and we're a treadmill team that realistically was a play in team at best. I'm excited for the offseason to see how the pieces move. Fingers crossed for one more crappy season.
I really don't think you could. Getting young players to play hard most of the time shouldn't be the top praise for a coach after three years.
I think I could. Context matters. After three years, the team has changed GM’s, overhauled the roster and likely had more injuries than any other team in a three year span. Yes, getting players to play hard when actively and knowingly tanking is no easy task. especially on defense. This would be like me judging an employee when they had come on board, having to learn a system, force a new system on them within a year and then hire a bunch of College kids with no experience to work around said employee. Said employee is going to have a bumpy ride. Information flow not up to par, known responsibilities unclear, etc. There is no way to accurately assess the employee with an evolving situation like that. Other than their perseverance and ability to adapt. I think Billups has adapted adequately aNd has the college kids working hard at learning the new system. To me, that's all i can ask for at the moment. Realisitc expectations to real situations.
Those college kids are supposed to improve as a group. Normally there's some standard that's trying to be established that you see signs of. What's the Blazers identity on either end of the floor that they're building for? Obviously they're not going to execute it all that well due to a lack of experience, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't show some consistency or progress towards playing a certain way. At the start of the season Chauncey was preaching being aggressive defensively. At the end of the season he ran primarily drop scheme. At the start of the season he preached playing fast (and their youth is capable of playing fast). They had the 20th fastest pace. They preached playing as a team this season, yet Chauncey will spam inefficient Jerami Grant isos when he's much more efficient as an off-ball player. The Blazers ranked LAST in their percentage of field goals assisted (and rebuilding teams such as San Antonio and Toronto were 1st and 2nd). Nobody's expecting them to excel due to all the reasons you stated. But what I expect is for them to show some semblance of progressing towards the identity that Chauncey tries to preach.
In the last 10 years of exit-interviews, are there even 3 examples of meaningful information that was shared? These seem like nothing-burgers to me.
When he has done that in the past he has gotten busted for it. There's no reason for him to say anything of substance now.
We want these people to be honest, until they are, then we want to rip them, then they're not forthcoming, and we want to rip them for that. I could do without the exit-interviews at this point.
For years they just wrote about them in the paper. Now it has to be broadcasted on the net.....not necessary, it should be between employee and employer anyway. A Brief write up should be good enough. The best thing Joe said today was "my job is to find replacements for ya" so go to work.
The problem when he said something of substance is he did nothing of substance to back up what he said. He did nothing. He said stuff he didn't mean. So that excuses him saying nothing now?
Did you not see improvement from almost every young player? I did. Camara improved over the season Walker improved alot Scoot improved alot Murray improved some as did Rupert. but they are still just college kids who need a couple season under them. But if you didn't see the defensive grit and improvement in them? I dont know what you are watching.
How did anyone even care this season? I checked out around game 2. Lol. Until they care, I won't care. This is the first year I didn't care, and it felt kinda good. It's a weird fucking day when Neil cared more about this team than whatever jokers we got now.
Hilarious how people call Olshey a snake oil salesmen but let Cronin off the hook Cronin is a disaster of epic proportions, closing in on being worse than Neil
Refer to the epic disaster thread for more info but the guy doesn’t even do the things he says he is trying to do. if we somehow draft another guard this year, I might go nuclear
The team has been actively trying to lose games for extended stretches over the last three seasons and there are posts in this thread actually questioning Chauncey Billups? The guy should get a medal for putting up with it. Would not blame him for saying he’s had enough.
Agreed. He's done excellent keeping players focused and working hard during this time. Blazers lack of success is 100% from the lack of talent on the roster, which is solely the GM. That doesn't mean Billups is an elite coach or anything. But no coach could have done anything meaningfully better with this group, many coaches would've been much worse.
