How real is it, really?

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Stevenson

Stevenson

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No one expected this start. Of course it's great, and fun, but is it real? Is this wining percentage sustainable?

Personally, I think it's not. Of course I hope I'm wrong, but this is not the best team in the west.
 
Stevenson said:
No one expected this start. Of course it's great, and fun, but is it real? Is this wining percentage sustainable?

Personally, I think it's not. Of course I hope I'm wrong, but this is not the best team in the west.
Click to expand...
I don't know if 71% .712 winning percentage is sustainable but I do think this is a pretty big sample size against some of the best teams in the league. We have another tough stretch coming with Utah, Milwaukee, Cleveland but I think we'll win at least two out of those three and that's what I think we can sustain. I think we will keep winning two out of every three games if we stay healthy and keep getting better at the same rate as the rest of the league. Just growing together as a team like every roster does throughout the season.

So .6666 or 66.6% which will get us to around 54 wins. It's crazy because I had us at 46 wins and battling to stay out of the play ins but now I think we'll be battling for seeding and most likely having HCA in the first round at least.
 
Stevenson said:
No one expected this start. Of course it's great, and fun, but is it real? Is this wining percentage sustainable?

Personally, I think it's not. Of course I hope I'm wrong, but this is not the best team in the west.
Click to expand...
Fantastic post FAMS!
 
Stevenson said:
No one expected this start. Of course it's great, and fun, but is it real? Is this wining percentage sustainable?

Personally, I think it's not. Of course I hope I'm wrong, but this is not the best team in the west.
Click to expand...
We just need to take it one game at a time and worry about our own journey. Right now we’re up 1 game on the Suns and Nuggets, 1.5 games ahead of the Grizzlies/Pels and 2 games ahead of the Grizzlies. We’ve already won the season series vs the Suns and beaten the Pels and Nuggets once. Grizzlies have already lost to the Jazz twice, while two of our games vs the Jazz aren’t until January and March when they could already be tanking.

Let’s make it through November first, then we can assess the standings. As long as we make it through this tough stretch, we’ll be fine. We aren’t even fully healthy yet, and abunch of other teams have yet to go through a tough stretch of games.
 
Stevenson said:
No one expected this start. Of course it's great, and fun, but is it real? Is this wining percentage sustainable?

Personally, I think it's not. Of course I hope I'm wrong, but this is not the best team in the west.
Click to expand...
I think most of us have some built-in skepticism for the Blazers; it seems impossible to follow this team for decades and NOT grow a bit jaded after all the heartbreak and disappointment we've had to endure as fans.

What I'd ask is for a more critical analysis. IF this year's team's isn't actually as good as their current record, which aspect of their start isn't sustainable? Is it just the "winning close games" thing?

What encourages me more than anything else is that they have a lot of things that haven't actually gone their way so far. Ant's percentages have dipped. Hart isn't shooting particularly well. Several players (including Dame) have missed multiple games--some haven't even played at all. Turnovers! ('nuff said). I honestly feel like there are more things to point out that can reasonably be expected to improve than there are things that we should expect to drop off.

So all that to say...yes, I do feel like this is real and sustainable, and I haven't felt like this about the Blazers in a long, long time.
 
Last edited:
Stevenson said:
No one expected this start. Of course it's great, and fun, but is it real? Is this wining percentage sustainable?

Personally, I think it's not. Of course I hope I'm wrong, but this is not the best team in the west.
Click to expand...
Yeah i agree. This level isn't sustainable but they are playing well and i can appreciate that.
 
Our point differential +2.3 projects to 47-35 so I’d say our win/loss record is not real. On the flip side, we can expect improvement from Ant & Shaedon, both Dame and Nurk are playing sub par, our team is still getting used to each other, and adding GP2 should be huge. On the flip flip side, Grant can’t sustain 50% from 3 and Dane can’t sustain his all time high free throw rate. So somewhere around 50 wins seems right.
 
We haven’t lost 2 in a row yet.

14 games into the season, 68 games left

~1/6 of the way through the entire season

We would have to lose two games in a row 19 times in order to finish below .500 (40-42)
18 times and we would finish above .500 (42-40)

Without doing the math for 3+ game losing streaks, or looking in detail at the schedule, I would say it’s plausible that we will finish with at least 42 wins.

We haven’t played Boston, Cleveland, Atlanta, or Milwaukie yet. Which is 8/68
 
I think Portland's level of play is sustainable. They aren't doing anything that gimmicky or playing in a weird aberrational way. Grant is probably going to cool off from three, but then Ant is due (statistically) to get hotter.

You can kind of see how there's an outside chance that Gary Payton has kind of a Detlef Shrempf effect, where a guy looks great on paper but kind of ruins team chemistry in an unforeseeable way through no fault of anybody just by taking minutes away from other guys. But I think that's only a possibility.

Somebody is bound to get hurt, and if it's Nurk or Eubanks our really thin center rotation gets exposed. But simultaneously, with so many younger players getting minutes, some guys are bound to show improvement as the season progresses. Does anybody really expect Sharpe to be the same or worse 3 months from now? Ant is just now starting to play as well as he did during his best stretch last year.

Portland survived the hardest part of the schedule, and hasn't feasted on any tanking teams as of yet (aside from Spurs). There are probably 15 easy wins ahead of us baked into other teams trying to lose for the Wembanyama sweepstakes.

To me it's not about Portland playing above its level. It's more a case of a number of good teams may not have hit their stride yet. The fact that Portland, Utah and San Antonio came out so hot right out of the gates seems to indicate that a lot of other teams aren't playing as well as they could. Golden State, Denver and Pelicans really should be better than they are. Minnesota should either right their ship or ship someone out (probably Kat) which creates more balance. Phoenix is better than their .615 record. Memphis is probably better than .600. Even the Lakers have hit on a better strategy with Westbrook, which should make them better going forward. The Clippers now at least know there's no point in waiting around for Kawhi.

I could see Portland drop down to .650 or .600 even without much of a dropoff in play, just by virtue of other teams solving their own internal problems.
 
mook said:
I think Portland's level of play is sustainable. They aren't doing anything that gimmicky or playing in a weird aberrational way. Grant is probably going to cool off from three, but then Ant is due (statistically) to get hotter.

You can kind of see how there's an outside chance that Gary Payton has kind of a Detlef Shrempf effect, where a guy looks great on paper but kind of ruins team chemistry in an unforeseeable way through no fault of anybody just by taking minutes away from other guys. But I think that's only a possibility.

Somebody is bound to get hurt, and if it's Nurk or Eubanks our really thin center rotation gets exposed. But simultaneously, with so many younger players getting minutes, some guys are bound to show improvement as the season progresses. Does anybody really expect Sharpe to be the same or worse 3 months from now? Ant is just now starting to play as well as he did during his best stretch last year.

Portland survived the hardest part of the schedule, and hasn't feasted on any tanking teams as of yet. There are probably 15 easy wins ahead of us baked into other teams trying to lose for the Wembanyama sweepstakes.

To me it's not about Portland playing above its level. It's more a case of a number of good teams may not have hit their stride yet. The fact that Portland, Utah and San Antonio came out so hot right out of the gates seems to indicate that a lot of other teams aren't playing as well as they could. Golden State, Denver and Pelicans really should be better than they are. Minnesota should either right their ship or ship someone out (probably Kat) which creates more balance. Phoenix is better than their .615 record. Memphis is probably better than .600. Even the Lakers have hit on a better strategy with Westbrook, which should make them better going forward.

I could see Portland drop down to .650 or .600 even without much of a dropoff in play, just by virtue of other teams solving their own internal problems.
Click to expand...
Nice post!
Defense plays at home and on the road.
 
THE HCP said:
Many many moons ago, a coach named Maurice Cheeks looked at me and said, “Big John, it’s a LOOOONNG season.”
Click to expand...

Yeah, but knowing Maurice Cheeks, you were probably talking about if he was done using the bathroom on the team plane.
 
The Blazers have the best record in the west and the 3rd best in the NBA. Is that sustainable? No way
If they lose these next two games they could drop to 6th. If they have a losing record on the road trip they could drop out of the playoffs.
There is a very fine line at this point between 1st and 11th.

However, they are in a much better position right now than I thought they would. The goal in my mind was for them to get better as the season goes on. We still need that to happen, and it could. But no way do they maintain a 70% winning percentage for the whole season.
 
Too much parity in the west to think this is real. We might have elevated ourselves to at the worst a play-in status, but remain guarded about predicting too much better than that
 
illmatic99 said:
Too much parity in the west to think this is real. We might have elevated ourselves to at the worst a play-in status, but remain guarded about predicting too much better than that
Click to expand...

On the flip side......because of the parity, it will be hard for anyone to win at a high percentage. So we could end up like I thought (46-48 wins) and still be fighting for the 4th or 5th spot. (which I did not think was possible)
 
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