I've read a few "wheres mixum posts" and I think its great we have won 5 in a row but i mean, for me its hard to get pumped up about beating minny twice, an old spurs team on a back to back and the hornets who look like they are an absolute mess. Lets beat the Bobcats and Hawks and then I will give praise. Both are very good home teams. I think we are playing good ball but I have to wonder how we would do vs teams like Dallas, Phoenix etc. These teams we are beating... we should beat. It shouldnt be close. Theres a few things though ive noticed.... 1. Rudy. Wow I am starting to cringe when he comes in the game. Can he play any worse? Im wondering if he's tired, hurt, or just hates being on this team? I would bet anything he demands a trade at some point this season. 2. Roy has not played all taht great this year. Seems to have way too many problems handling the ball. He will figure it out. 3. Why does Blake start? He offers nothing but a few threes. 4. Bayless has looked much improved but its hard to get a real read as far as improvement. 5. Oden and LA have been great. Really have saved us in many games so far. 6. Webster is an odd player.... kinda reminds me of bayless. Hard to figure out. 7. Pryz needs to be resigned. Having him and oden is almost not fair to the league but i love it! 8. Outlaw still is lost on defense but seems to have a bit of a swagger this year. Confidence? 9. Watching Miller run the team is so nice compared to the crap PGs we have seen the last 5-7 years. So thats what a real PG looks like? 10. We have played well but i still think we have to remember we are playing some bad bad teams and the hornets are a complete mess. If we were playing anyone decent last night, we would have been down by 15 easy in the 1st qtr. Just being honest.
I agree with most of your post and Im encouraged by your cautious optimisim. Few things though. 1) Most of our wins are games we are suppose to win but we have looked very impressive in most of them. Definatly no reason to not be excited about our play of late. 2) True Rudy hasnt been playing well but we havnt needed him to score. It seems that when he is in he has been working on PG duties more than scoring, and some of his passes have been amazing while others have been less than amazing. I kind of get the feeling that he is concentrating on another aspect of his game at the moment. 3) Pryz + Oden is an amazing one two punch, wow. Sign Pryz
im just worried that when we get into shoot outs with good offensive teams.... we will be screwed with no pure scorer.
I agree with much of your post. As far as Oden and Joel, I agree that they are a great 1-2 punch, but I really think that for the Blazers to take the next step, Oden and Nate need to figure out how to keep Oden on the floor for 30mpg. Right now he is at ~23mpg with a PER that is 8 higher than Joel. The difference is substantial and Oden is really the key to our team. LMA has been a great lately, and Miller has been a relief, but Oden is just so intimidating and the +/- numbers back that up.
This is actually a case where the +/- stat is deceiving. Greg plays most of his minutes with the starters (better players) and Joel plays more with the bench. I agree that Oden should start playing more minutes and will be a far better player sooner rather than later, but for now the difference in contribution isn't as wide as the +/- would indicate.
He hasnt been that bad, and we haven't needed him to be great. When the time comes he will step it up.
I understand you may consider wins against those teams lesser of value, but I actually see them as very important games. The main reason was how we beat them. Normally, those types of teams last season gave us fits, usually because our jump shots weren't falling. Now that we've looked to establish the low post game more, we can finally put teams like them away for good. Of course this excludes SAS, since I still think they are a quality team. The best thing I've seen are teams are changing how they play us. Forcing other teams to go outside their comfort zone is what sets apart the elite from the pretenders. Are we going to win it all this year? WELL HELL FUCKING YEAH! GO BLAZERS!