Poll: Who do you blame for the Blazer current state of Affairs

[Nikolokolus]

Honest question: do you really think that any management in the NBA could recover from the unexpected retirement, within a couple of weeks of the start of a lockout delayed season, of its franchise player and yet another knee surgery on a major player that you were expecting back? I don't think Red Auerbach or Jerry West in their prime could have scrambled and recovered from that.

If management really was counting on Brandon and Greg being major contributors this year, then I blame them for not having much of a plan. Those two should have been seen as "gravy." Now on the other hand, were they dealt a shit sandwich? For sure. But Paul/Nate/Larry/Bert still hasn't hired a GM and we're closing in on the mid-point of a very short season.

Get busy living or get busy dying.

 

[e_blazer]

If management really was counting on Brandon and Greg being major contributors this year, then I blame them for not having much of a plan. Those two should have been seen as "gravy." Now on the other hand, were they dealt a shit sandwich? For sure. But Paul/Nate/Larry/Bert still hasn't hired a GM and we're closing in on the mid-point of a very short season.

Get busy living or get busy dying.

Can't disagree with that. Frankly, I think that the biggest mystery hanging around this franchise is why there hasn't been a GM hired. I suppose it made sense to stall when it looked like the season might be totally lost...why pay a new GM to sit on his butt? But why wasn't there a process in the works to make a quick hire once the season got going? To me, this is one sign that seems to point to PA considering selling the team. A new owner would likely want to pick their own GM.

As far as the injury thing goes, I was more thinking of Chad Buchanan. I think he did a pretty decent job given what he was dealt that couldn't have been foreseen.

 

[BBert]

Honest question: do you really think that any management in the NBA could recover from the unexpected retirement, within a couple of weeks of the start of a lockout delayed season, of its franchise player and yet another knee surgery on a major player that you were expecting back? I don't think Red Auerbach or Jerry West in their prime could have scrambled and recovered from that.

No.

 

[BBert]

Could they have salvaged this season? Maybe not. If they saw that they couldn't save this season, would they have made moves with an eye to the future? I would certainly think so.

If management really was counting on Brandon and Greg being major contributors this year, then I blame them for not having much of a plan. Those two should have been seen as "gravy." Now on the other hand, were they dealt a shit sandwich? For sure. But Paul/Nate/Larry/Bert still hasn't hired a GM and we're closing in on the mid-point of a very short season.

Get busy living or get busy dying.

Those are pretty good answers. No doubt the injuries killed us. But I've been unhappy with a lot of things for a long time, Nate the longest. At the moment, with the current state of affairs, I'm all out of hope for the future. It feels like a really long trip, and a long way to go.

 

[Mediocre Man]

Who cares? It's just a game. Blazers rule even if they lose some games.

I agree with SnakeOiler. Please don't start threads about the team in a Blazers forum. And absolutely never say anything negative or question anything that they do

 

[Mediocre Man]

As for the actual question, I think you have to start at the top. With PA being such a hands on owner, it's his fault. It's his fault we don't have a stable GM. It's his fault the GMs we have had have drafted injured players over and over. Reading that The Blazers knew about potential injury issues because of the different leg lengths on Oden, and drafting him anyway, is insanity. Continually drafting Euros in the first round and getting little to no value out of them falls on the active owner. Keeping a coach here that has proven he can't win in the playoffs for as long as he has is the fault of the owner.

Now PA has done great things too, but the answer to the question asked is the owner.

 

[Mediocre Man]

As for the people employed by the team.....

The GM has done a kiss poor job finding the fit talent

The coach has done a piss poor job taking advantage of a full roster

It's not the players fault that byte aren't very good

 

[UKRAINEFAN]

The entire brain trust; Allen, Kolde, Buchanan, Miller and McMillan.

 

[oldguy]

I blame bad luck that at least 2 out of three studs we drafted were busts due to knee problems. If we had 2 of the 3 healthy, we wouldn't have this thread. The fact that KP's last two drafts sucked ass doesn't help, either.

Go Blazers

 

[Mediocre Man]

I blame bad luck that at least 2 out of three studs we drafted were busts due to knee problems. If we had 2 of the 3 healthy, we wouldn't have this thread. The fact that KP's last two drafts sucked ass doesn't help, either.

Go Blazers

The Blazers have said that they knew about the risk of both Brandon's and Greg's knees before they were drafted. It has nothing to do with bad luck, and everything to do with our front office making poor decisions

 

[BlazerCaravan]

Oh ffs you promised me you weren't going to post here for a while!

 

[Mediocre Man]

Oh ffs you promised me you weren't going to post here for a while!

It was a solid 1+ week

 

[mook]

Oden and Roy's knees. Pick any good team in the league and imagine them without two franchise-quality players. They'd be a similar mediocre mess. (Well, maybe not Miami if they still had LeBron, but that's just a testament to how great LeBron is.)

All I'm really hoping for at this point is for Batum to blow up. If he can mature into a star player, Portland has something of a path forward. (Well, another path besides hoping Oden makes a full recovery, which is a pretty slim hope.) It's a lot to hope for, I'll admit.

Without that, I'm afraid we may be in for many years of being the Garnett Timberwolves.

 

[bigbailes]

how can anyone still look at this situation and say injuries when the team knew about the injuries all along and rolled the dice anyways? hell, WE knew about the greater than normal injury risks that these two guys were going to be. and that was when we drafted them, to think they were going to get anything from either of those two guys this season, like nic said, was icing on the cake.

 

[BBert]

The injuries are old news. Oden has been injured since day one. Roy's knees crapped out what, two seasons before this season? It should have been a surprise to no one that Roy was not going to be serviceable this year.

 

[3RA1N1AC]

 

[Minstrel]

All I'm really hoping for at this point is for Batum to blow up. If he can mature into a star player, Portland has something of a path forward. (Well, another path besides hoping Oden makes a full recovery, which is a pretty slim hope.) It's a lot to hope for, I'll admit.

Without that, I'm afraid we may be in for many years of being the Garnett Timberwolves.

If Batum blows up, the next logical step will be Aldridge suffering a knee injury and Batum having persistent foot problems that constantly limit his availability.

Then we'll be able to hope for Nolan Smith to blow up. Not literally. Hopefully.

 

[mook]

The injuries are old news. Oden has been injured since day one. Roy's knees crapped out what, two seasons before this season? It should have been a surprise to no one that Roy was not going to be serviceable this year.

They are indeed old news. Except that when a superstar's career unexpectedly ends during his peak years it creates a vacuum that takes several years to fill. We didn't get to trade him for parts. We just saw all that trade value blow away in a whiff of smoke. Yet unlike most teams that see that happen (see Cleveland post-Lebron) we haven't had bad enough showings to start yielding decent draft picks. Aldridge is just too good.

So yeah, there's a big void there, and we've known about it for a while. But just because a problem is a couple of years old doesn't make it illegitimate.

Without getting really lucky with mediocre-to-bad draft picks, or more heists like Gerald Wallace (and to a lesser extent Matthews), or an explosion in productivity by Batum and/or Oden, we're kind of stuck.

 

[mook]

If Batum blows up, the next logical step will be Aldridge suffering a knee injury and Batum having persistent foot problems that constantly limit his availability.

Then we'll be able to hope for Nolan Smith to blow up. Not literally. Hopefully.

It is the law of the jungle, the Circle of Limbs.