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Fez Forthright said:


The fact that this team only has five more wins than the Warriors is inexcusable.

How long can Neil continue to use Nurk as a crutch?
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Nurk as a crutch? Where has Olshey been using Nurkich as a crutch? It is a fact that he is an integral part of the team and has been out all season.
 
I would guess it's because their bench is stronger than Portlands?

Also, all injuries are not the same.

Siakam has been out 5 games. Lowry was out for a stretch earlier in the year (but Siakam wasn't out).

they also played 6 shitty teams (including Portland) in that stretch.

Powell missed the same games as Siakam, and they're 3-2 in that stretch. Plus, everyone talks about how great the win @ boston was, well, it came right after they lost @ home to Boston, by the same amount of points.


Ibaka missed games earlier, but not when their best player was out.

And also, like I said earlier, all injuries are not the same.

Nurk, out for most of the year if not all of it.
Collins most likely out for all of the season too.
Hood? Gone until next year at the best.

Their injuries? 10 games, 11 games, and 5 and 5 games. NONE of their injuries are season long where you have to make drastic changes to your lineup. Teams can handle short stretches where you are missing players. Bench players tend to be bench players for a reason (they're young/up and coming or they're old or just not that good). They can cover for short periods but to expect them to perform similar to the starters (for longer stretches of time) is not realistic. That's what has happened in Portland. We're expecting backups to perform at the pace that the starters were. The only positive is that Anthony and Hassan are performing positively. But at the expense of the depth (tho Anthony wouldn't be on the team if Collins had gotten hurt).

Losing Nurk, Collins and Hood lost them 3 starters, for the rest of the season (most likely). If Lowry, Ibaka and Powell were gone for the rest of the year, then maybe the situations would be comparable.
 
julius said:
I would guess it's because their bench is stronger than Portlands?

Also, all injuries are not the same.

Siakam has been out 5 games. Lowry was out for a stretch earlier in the year (but Siakam wasn't out).

they also played 6 shitty teams (including Portland) in that stretch.

Powell missed the same games as Siakam, and they're 3-2 in that stretch. Plus, everyone talks about how great the win @ boston was, well, it came right after they lost @ home to Boston, by the same amount of points.


Ibaka missed games earlier, but not when their best player was out.

And also, like I said earlier, all injuries are not the same.

Nurk, out for most of the year if not all of it.
Collins most likely out for all of the season too.
Hood? Gone until next year at the best.

Their injuries? 10 games, 11 games, and 5 and 5 games. NONE of their injuries are season long where you have to make drastic changes to your lineup. Teams can handle short stretches where you are missing players. Bench players tend to be bench players for a reason (they're young/up and coming or they're old or just not that good). They can cover for short periods but to expect them to perform similar to the starters (for longer stretches of time) is not realistic. That's what has happened in Portland. We're expecting backups to perform at the pace that the starters were. The only positive is that Anthony and Hassan are performing positively. But at the expense of the depth (tho Anthony wouldn't be on the team if Collins had gotten hurt).

Losing Nurk, Collins and Hood lost them 3 starters, for the rest of the season (most likely). If Lowry, Ibaka and Powell were gone for the rest of the year, then maybe the situations would be comparable.
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Also doesn't hurt to play in the East. They've played 11 games against western conference teams. We've played 23.

Also, they have 7 guys who have played in more than 80% of the games. We have 6.

If I were to point to one statistic over any other, though, that didn't include injuries, it's that Hezonja and Tolliver have comined for 48 games played, averaging 16 minutes each. Until yesterday, neither had scored even 12 points in a game.

I'm really struggling to remember a time when we got so fucking little out of a pair of forwards. That's not lack of heart or injuries or bad coaching. That's just two guys really, really sucking.

It's so tiring hearing people bitch about our coaching. If you think Stotts sucks, go look and see how Harkless and Aminu are doing on their new teams. I'll make it easy. The quick answer is they look about as shitty as Tolliver and Hezonja do this year in the advanced metrics.

It's a league loaded with versatile wingmen, and we have Carmello, Tolliver and Hezonja.

*sigh* I've been wanting us to trade CJ for a long, long time. He's put up good numbers this year after an early slump, and I think his trade value is about as good as it's going to get. Ant isn't perfect, but he's at least a passable stopgap if we trade CJ. We have to trade CJ for length and defense and scoring at that 3/4 position.

Thanks to the surprising production of Carmello and Ant's improvement, there's still time to save this season by at least getting into the playoffs. From there you hope some of our injured guys can contribute to winning basketball, and we get lucky and get to the second round. But I don't see it happening if we keep CJ.
 
I do think the "we're missing 3 starters" has a significant level of hollow excuse to it

* Nurkic: Portland went 9-2 without Nurkic last season, and was 8-4 in the playoffs, making it to the WCF before they ran into a real contender. AND, Portland has very good replacement C in Whiteside who is actually better than Nurkic at some things. It's not like Portland has had to replace Nurkic with Skal or Joel Freeland. There's not a lot of statistical difference between Nurk's production last season and Whiteside's this season

* Hood: Blazers were 8-12 with Hood this season, and 6-7 without him. Hood's individual numbers were good but he wasn't making a noticeable difference in the won/loss record

* Zach: he's been missed, but perhaps the biggest reason for that is the roster hole that was behind him. When he went down all the Blazers had was Tolliver and Hezonja. IMO, Zach also wouldn't have had the type of impact on the won-loss record that some here imagine; he's simply not that good. Further, Portland's 2 giant weaknesses this season have been perimeter defense and rebounding. Zach is not good at either of those things

certainly, there's a cumulative impact due to the number of injuries, but I don't see how anybody can watch this team and conclude the only thing wrong with it is injuries
 
wizenheimer said:
* Zach: he's been missed, but perhaps the biggest reason for that is the roster hole that was behind him. When he went down all the Blazers had was Tolliver and Hezonja. IMO, Zach also wouldn't have had the type of impact on the won-loss record that some here imagine; he's simply not that good. Further, Portland's 2 giant weaknesses this season have been perimeter defense and rebounding. Zach is not good at either of those things
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This is spot-on.

I'm a huge Collins fan but he's been extremely underwhelming. His development has been at a snail's pace.

He's a decent shooter and has real potential as a p&p big, but he's essentially a Joel Przybilla that is in real danger of fouling out of a game before halftime right now.
 
Fez Forthright said:
This is spot-on.

I'm a huge Collins fan but he's been extremely underwhelming. His development has been at a snail's pace.

He's a decent shooter and has real potential as a p&p big, but he's essentially a Joel Przybilla that is in real danger of fouling out of a game before halftime right now.
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That's why I don't think he's the starting four. I think he's a backup 4/5. I think that's a perfect role for him. I don't like him as our full time starting power forward.
 
You know Skals knee is bad if the results are "pending" and Moses Brown is headed back from G League
 
Neil needs to use the injured player exception to sign another big man
 
Chris Craig said:
You know Skals knee is bad if the results are "pending" and Moses Brown is headed back from G League
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He probably tore something, and is out for the year.

Usually others are the ones who say this kinda stuff.
 
tlongII said:
It’s ridiculous and uninformed to not attribute our play this season to injuries. The NBA is still a big man’s game and we hardly have any.
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When a team backslides as badly as the Blazers have, it is pretty unlikely that there is only one cause.
 
Fez Forthright said:


The fact that this team only has five more wins than the Warriors is inexcusable.

How long can Neil continue to use Nurk as a crutch?
Click to expand...


That’s why I sit here and laugh at folks who think otherwise. We were never that good from the get go. We pretty much got use to playing without Nurk so stop using his injury as an excuse. Zach Collins? Oh please that dude isn’t worth THIS much losing.

This team is a joke and would love to usher a fresh new era
 
wizenheimer said:
I do think the "we're missing 3 starters" has a significant level of hollow excuse to it

* Nurkic: Portland went 9-2 without Nurkic last season, and was 8-4 in the playoffs, making it to the WCF before they ran into a real contender. AND, Portland has very good replacement C in Whiteside who is actually better than Nurkic at some things. It's not like Portland has had to replace Nurkic with Skal or Joel Freeland. There's not a lot of statistical difference between Nurk's production last season and Whiteside's this season

* Hood: Blazers were 8-12 with Hood this season, and 6-7 without him. Hood's individual numbers were good but he wasn't making a noticeable difference in the won/loss record

* Zach: he's been missed, but perhaps the biggest reason for that is the roster hole that was behind him. When he went down all the Blazers had was Tolliver and Hezonja. IMO, Zach also wouldn't have had the type of impact on the won-loss record that some here imagine; he's simply not that good. Further, Portland's 2 giant weaknesses this season have been perimeter defense and rebounding. Zach is not good at either of those things

certainly, there's a cumulative impact due to the number of injuries, but I don't see how anybody can watch this team and conclude the only thing wrong with it is injuries
Click to expand...

You made a good argument why Collins injury was so important. The guys behind him are a level or two below. Another that you didn’t mention is that Collins can play center while the others can’t.
 
Chris Craig said:
I feel like we should start a betting thread on who goes down next
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Whiteside. He'll have to play a lot more minutes and probably be more on the cautious side..which tends to lead to injuries imho. I.e., over thinking.
 
blazerfan11 said:
Another that you didn’t mention is that Collins can play center while the others can’t.
Click to expand...

Skal has been the backup C. And if you want to compare Skal this season to Zach last season in order to get a handle on what Portland would be gaining or losing:

PER: Zach 13.5....Skal 15.6
TS%: Zach .562....Skal .588
rebound rate: Zach 13.5%....Skal 15.6%
assist rate: Zach 7.1%....Skal 15.4%
block rate: Zach 3.9%....Skal 4.6%
defensive rating: Zach 110....Skal 110
winshares/48: Zach 13.5....Skal 15.6
defensive box plus/minus: Zach 1.0....Skal 1.6
box plus/minus: Zach 0.1....Skal 1.5

honestly, I don't really see that Zach would be a significant upgrade over Skal in the backup C role, and in many ways may have been a downgrade; Skal has been playing pretty well overall, most of the time. I think Zach has become overrated in his absence

as I said, I think too many people are leaning too heavily on injuries to excuse what this season has been. They are a factor for sure, but there's also a lot of other factors mitigating the actual impact of those injuries
 
wizenheimer said:
Skal has been the backup C. And if you want to compare Skal this season to Zach last season in order to get a handle on what Portland would be gaining or losing:

PER: Zach 13.5....Skal 15.6
TS%: Zach .562....Skal .588
rebound rate: Zach 13.5%....Skal 15.6%
assist rate: Zach 7.1%....Skal 15.4%
block rate: Zach 3.9%....Skal 4.6%
defensive rating: Zach 110....Skal 110
winshares/48: Zach 13.5....Skal 15.6
defensive box plus/minus: Zach 1.0....Skal 1.6
box plus/minus: Zach 0.1....Skal 1.5

honestly, I don't really see that Zach would be a significant upgrade over Skal in the backup C role, and in many ways may have been a downgrade; Skal has been playing pretty well overall, most of the time. I think Zach has become overrated in his absence

as I said, I think too many people are leaning too heavily on injuries to excuse what this season has been. They are a factor for sure, but there's also a lot of other factors mitigating the actual impact of those injuries
Click to expand...

What are these “other” factors you’re referring to?
 
wizenheimer said:
Skal has been the backup C. And if you want to compare Skal this season to Zach last season in order to get a handle on what Portland would be gaining or losing:

PER: Zach 13.5....Skal 15.6
TS%: Zach .562....Skal .588
rebound rate: Zach 13.5%....Skal 15.6%
assist rate: Zach 7.1%....Skal 15.4%
block rate: Zach 3.9%....Skal 4.6%
defensive rating: Zach 110....Skal 110
winshares/48: Zach 13.5....Skal 15.6
defensive box plus/minus: Zach 1.0....Skal 1.6
box plus/minus: Zach 0.1....Skal 1.5

honestly, I don't really see that Zach would be a significant upgrade over Skal in the backup C role, and in many ways may have been a downgrade; Skal has been playing pretty well overall, most of the time. I think Zach has become overrated in his absence

as I said, I think too many people are leaning too heavily on injuries to excuse what this season has been. They are a factor for sure, but there's also a lot of other factors mitigating the actual impact of those injuries
Click to expand...
It seems like you're argument amounts to all their starters sucked so bad their injuries don't mean anything, or don't mean very much. They were just going to be bad. Which is all just ways for you to say Neil sucks because he put a bad team together? I'm really just trying to figure out why you're constantly on this the injuries don't matter thing it's just an excuse. Like what's the end-game here? I know you've said you don't like Neil, is that the end game, pointing out that Neil sucks?
 
wizenheimer said:
I do think the "we're missing 3 starters" has a significant level of hollow excuse to it

* Nurkic: Portland went 9-2 without Nurkic last season, and was 8-4 in the playoffs, making it to the WCF before they ran into a real contender. AND, Portland has very good replacement C in Whiteside who is actually better than Nurkic at some things. It's not like Portland has had to replace Nurkic with Skal or Joel Freeland. There's not a lot of statistical difference between Nurk's production last season and Whiteside's this season

* Hood: Blazers were 8-12 with Hood this season, and 6-7 without him. Hood's individual numbers were good but he wasn't making a noticeable difference in the won/loss record

* Zach: he's been missed, but perhaps the biggest reason for that is the roster hole that was behind him. When he went down all the Blazers had was Tolliver and Hezonja. IMO, Zach also wouldn't have had the type of impact on the won-loss record that some here imagine; he's simply not that good. Further, Portland's 2 giant weaknesses this season have been perimeter defense and rebounding. Zach is not good at either of those things

certainly, there's a cumulative impact due to the number of injuries, but I don't see how anybody can watch this team and conclude the only thing wrong with it is injuries
Click to expand...

All of these points are related to injuries.
 
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