they are
7-9 without Deni
15-12 without Sharpe
10-8 without Grant
14-15 without Jrue
13-10 with Scoot (
but that came against the softest part of their schedule)
I'm not seeing any significant difference. Anything to point to
what I have seen is a raft full of injury excuses for Portland losses. For some reason, Spotrac's website is down right now, at least it is for me, I linked it in a post a week or two ago. What is showed is that over the 5 seasons of Cronin's teams, the Blazers were ranked 5th in the number of injuries. They always have lots of injuries. Meaning it's not a one season bug but a 5 season feature. It's not credible to talk about how the team would do when healthy when they are never healthy
look at games missed by starters:
Camara 0
Avdija 16
Jrue 29
Sharpe 27
Clingan 5
Portland 77
Holmgren 11
SGA 12
Williams 45
Dort 13
Hartenstein 32
OKC 113
Fox 10
Vassell 15
Castle 12
Wemby 15
Barnes 5
Spurs 57
Murray 5
Jokic 16
Braun 36
Johnson 26
Gordon 43
Denver 126
Doncic 12
Reaves 26
Lebron 21
Smart 14
Ayton 10
Lakers 83
Edwards 15
McDaniels 2
Randle 0
Gobert 3
DiVincenzo 0
Minny 20
Amen 2
Durant 3
Smith 4
Sengun 9
Eason 22
Houston 40
Booker 16
Brooks 23
Allen 28
O'Neal 3
Williams 16
Phoenix 86
Curry 35
Butler 36
Green 13
Moody 14
Podzieminski 0
Warriors 98
Portland is middle of the pack among WC playoff/play-in team
Basketball index actually tries to gauge injuries by the quality of players missing games. '
Wins above replacement missed'. What they show is that Portland has missed fewer than the league average
www.bball-index.com
you can sort on the table. Portland 17th in missed WAR; 10th in missed minutes; 8th in missed games. Pretty simple concept; That being that Jokic missing 16 games is not the same as Grant missing 18; that Aaron Gordon missing 43 is not the same as Scoot missing 52; that Curry missing 35 is not like Wesley missing 45
so yeah, I'll occasionally push back when people point to injuries as the reason Portland is where they are. That's not to say Portland hasn't had injuries. It is to say that all the other teams in the NBA who aren't tanking are dealing with the same thing
