Game Thread 2024-25 GAME #47 - BLAZERS VS BUCKS - JAN 28, 2025 - TUES - 7:00 PM - TNT - BLAZERVISION

Right?! Most fired up I've ever seen him on defense.

 

So who do we blame for these wins? Chauncey? Does he have the team just hustling and grinding and playing to hard?

 

Yes, having Jerami Grant only play 16 minutes against the Bucks was a genius move. I approve! Good job, Chauncey.

 

We blame a well constructed team, put together by Cronin and the people he has surrounded himself with. It's a beautiful thing to witness. There was no chance in hell that this was going to be a top lotto team. Never

 

Billups has them fighting for sure. He’s making it work. Somehow. Credit

 

Yeah Chauncey's actually doing a great job with this roster. Now if we're trying to find blame for our shitty tank then that's gotta be on Joe. You can't have win now players on a rebuilding team that's still in need of a superstar via the draft. Ant and Jerami shouldn't have started the season with us and I have to believe we could have already gotten good value for Rob as well. All three of these guys have been big contributors to wins.

If it's the young guys that I expect to be on the team once we get back to the playoffs then I don't have a huge problem with the wins but when it's guys that I think should be elsewhere doing the heaviest of lifting it's kind of hard to stomach when you've watched a bunch of Duke games and a bunch of Rutgers too.

Chauncey should always coach his roster to do the best they can, the players need to do the best they can, it's Joe that needs to make the trades or ask guys to sit so we have the best shot possible at Flagg or Bailey, who both make a lot of sense with the other guys we have.

 

By the 4th year of tanking the coach and the roster should be starting to figure it out. Chauncey is getting better, but his offensive playbook isn't up to snuff in my view yet at all. Defense however is top notch! Need better screens and maybe a give and go or pick and roll once in a while...lot of dribble handoffs and drive and kick outs now. Sometimes our screeners trip over each other. Scoot is improving and I give Chauncey a lot of credit for that but I'm not sure Sharpe is making the leap yet. We'll see.

 

Super impressive Billups has this roster at 18 wins. Only coach I'd bet to have 20+ wins with this squad is Spoelstra.

Most coaches I'd wager would have fewer wins.

 

Well this team had the 3rd fewest wins in the league last year, was last in the west, with 13 players returning. So "no chance in hell" seems an overstatement.

Appears you are happy with the change. Odd strategic choice to position the team to get a top pick in an epically weak draft and a poor pick in an epically strong draft.

 

I don't understand this sentence. Good franchises like the Thunder and Rockets tank briefly, add great talent then contend. We're not anywhere close to that group.

Not sure what a coach can "figure out" by tanking. Either the team adds talent or it doesn't.

Billups has this team 11 games under .500....

Olshey got 3rd seeds twice. Cronin has the Blazers 13th in the west. With some of the comments here you'd think the Blazers were close to HCA.

 

This is why Ant and Grant should have been moved before now.

They are good enough to help us beat bad teams.

Also why I question the timing of the Deni trade.

Without Deni, Grant and Ant we're probably sitting below 10 wins and in line to draft a potential superstar.

I don't think we have enough talent to ever compete with the top echelon teams. Without picking high in the draft we don't have a mechanism to add that talent...

 

23-12 the rest of the way puts us at 41-41 and good enough to make the play-in. The way we played last night, 23-12 seems possible.

 

Yeah that seems super possible that the Blazers win 66% of their games... That would be 4th in the west. So far this year that is better than all of the Nuggets, Lakers, Clippers, Wolves, Mavs.

So the Blazers are effectively a HCA level team today? Maybe we should trade all our future picks for some role players.

Betting odds today have the Blazers at 28 wins so you could put some big bets on that over.

 

Fucking disaster. The absolute worst case scenario for this team.

 

The Blazers winning is hardly a disaster to me. I'm here to watch games and enjoy them, not turn them off. Least exciting thing in my life is gushing over ping pong balls at this point. I've turned off way too many games early this season. It's starting to get fun again and that's why I'm a fan. I like Deni, Tou and Rob Williams more than any of our draft picks so far and none of them were drafted by us. If we aren't good enough, we won't win. If we are, the young players get playoff experience ...that's team building. I'm glad Kingspeed and bemac are cheering the team on these days...the franchise has needed that since Dame was traded. Things are looking up!

 

It all averages out. We would be a .500 team. Not a .660 team. Understand? I mean, if we only include the last 6 games, we are an .833 team! That means we have been playing like the best team in the league! Get it? In 2016-17, we were 18-27 and bounced back to go 23-14 the rest of the season despite a Nurk injury. Remember that Miami team with Dion Waiters that started 11-30 and finished 41-41? The 1993-94 Pacers team started 16-23, got the 5 seed and made it to the ECF. The way we have been playing, we could absolutely go 23-12 the rest of the way.

 

5-0 since this post.