Kinda seems like Blazers fans are falling in line with how the national media is talking about the Blazers. I wouldn't go off that at all. The national media barely knows more than a few players we have. This is already a really good team. We got way better. This is closer to the 1990 Blazers or the Chauncey Pistons. To me, they shouldn't be less than 5 in the Western Conference.
While I don't know if they're closer to the 90 blazers of the Pistons, I do agree that people are underrating the team. Take the best player off of any team, and they're going to be bad. You take off the best player and then trade the 2nd best player off that team, and they'll be HORRIBLE.
Think about it, before they traded CJ , they were 21-34 (after a 6 game losing streak) and that was after Dame went down. 13-22 when Dame stopped playing. I think the fact that dumpster fire of a roster got 27 wins was a miracle. Once Simons and Nurk went "down", they were putting up glorified CBA players (not even good enough to be G-league).
You add a healthy Dame to last years team, and they probably win 40 games. This years roster is better than last years, so I don't know how 45 wins isn't the basement of the teams wins *injuries withstanding*.
The year before, with Nurk and CJ missing chunks of games, won 42 games (out of 72, per 82 that'd be approx 48 wins). I'd argue that this year's roster is better (albeit smaller) than that roster, and on top of that the team is much better defensively. They have offensive threats from 4 of the 5 starters (if Hart is the starter, 5 of 5, with Nassir as the starter he's not necessarily a "threat" yet). They have a much stronger bench (which admittedly isn't saying much since last years bench was meh at best).
but mostly, they have a healthy Dame, arguably a top 4-8 player in the league, and probably the 2nd or 3rd best PG in the league. That will make a huge difference for this year. He took far crappier rosters to the playoffs before.
There are at least 4 teams in the WC who are outright tanking (Houston, San Antonio, OKC, and Utah...and you could argue that should be 12-13 wins right there). Throw in the teams in the EC who are tanking, and then the team being healthy...
